
11 



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Gass r7& 6_ 
Book «-n3?s* 



Shiparo Boor Company 

•YEOIOBOOKESHOPPE'" 
SALT LA^E CITY, UTAH 



BY PATH AND 
TRAIL 



OSWALD CRAWFORD ^io^6, oj 



FROM THE PRESS OF 

THE ^^INTERMGUNTAIN GATHOUG' 

1908 



^-1 31- 



Copyright, 1908 

BY 

INTERMOUNTAIN CATHOLIC PRESS COMPANY 



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/ 



1 



10 



TO 
MY FRIEND 

FREDERICK WHITE SCOFIELD, ESQUIRE 

IN REMEMBRANCE OF PLEASANT DAYS SPENT IN CHIAPAS, 

MEXICO, AND YUCATAN 

I DEDICATE THIS RECORD OF MY TRAVELS 

"BY PATH AND TRAIL" 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 

Paqc 

ORIGIN OF THE FIGHTING YAQUIS 5 

CB AFTER II. 
ON THE WAY TO THE BARRANCA 13 

CHAPTER 111. 
BATTLE OF THE ELEMENTS 25 

CHAPTER IV. 
VALLEY OF THE CHURCHES 33 

CHAPTER V. 
FRIEND OF THE MOUNTAINEER 39 

CHAPTER VI 
THE RUNNERS OF THE SIERRA 45 

CHAPTER VII. 
THE PRIEST AND THE YAQUIS 57 

CHAPTER VIII. 

WHERE MAN ENTERS AT HIS PERU 67 

vii 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 
THE DEAD OF THE DESERT 70 

CHAPTER X. 
THE FIGHT FOR LIFE 85 

CHAPTER XL 

THE "DIGGER INDIANS" 91 

CHAPTER XII. 
JESUITS AND DIGGER INDIANS 103 

CHAPTER XIII. 
THE VACA DE LUMBRE 109 

CHAPTER XIV. 
TIHE PRADERA AND GUANO BEDS 121 

CHAPTER XV. 
ORIGIN OF THE "PIOUS FUND" 127 

CHAPTER XVI. 
THE REPOSE OF THE GRAVE 135 

CHAPTER XVII. 

SOLDIERS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 141 

viii 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
A LAND OF SCENIC WONDERS 153 

CHAPTER XIX. 
VEGETATION OF THE DESERT 161 

CHAPTER XX. 
TEMPLES OF THE DESERT 169 

CHAPTER XXI. 
A MIRACLE OF NATURE 181 

CHAPTER XXII. 
THE PRE-HISTORIC RUIN 189 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
A CITY IN THE DESERT '. 197 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
CAMP OF THE CONSUMPTIVES 205 

CHAPTER XXV. 
THE OSTRICH FARM 213 



IX 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Facing Page 



Yaqui Fighters of the Bacatete Mountains o 



Tabahumari Indians, Nobthekn Mexico 49 



Half-Blood Cowboys, Lower California 91 



A "Digger Indian," Lower California 94 



MoQui Lovers, Cliff People ; 156 



Papago "Wikiup" 1^ 



Ruins, Ancient and Modfjin 191 



'White Eagle" and "The Puma" Apaches on Parade 202 



zl 



BOOK I. 
IN THE LAND OF THE YAQUI 



A SHORT TALK WITH THE READER 

The romance and weird fascination which belong to 
immense solitudes and untenanted wilds are fading away 
and, in a few years, will be as if they were not. The in- 
tangible and the immaterial leave no memories after 
them. 

The march of civilization is a benediction for the fu- 
ture, but it is also a devastation before which savage na- 
ture and savage man must go down. Unable or unwilling 
to adapt himself to new conditions and to the demands 
of a life foreign to his nature and his experience original 
man of North America is doomed, like the wild beast he 
hunted, to extinction. 

For centuries he stubbornly contested the white man's 
right to invade and seize upon his hunting grounds; he 
was no coward and when compelled, at last, to strike a 
truce with his enemy, he felt that Pate was against him, 
yielded to the inevitable and — all was over. In the Baca- 
tete mountains, amid the terrifying solitudes of the 
Sierras of Northern Mexico, the Yaquis — last of the 
fighting tribes — is disappearing in a lake of blood and 
when he is submerged the last dread war-whoop will 
shriek his requiem. It will never again be heard upon 
the earth. 

The lonely regions of our great continent, over which 
there brooded for unnumbered ages the silence which 
was before creation, are disappearing with the vanishing 
Indian; a new vegetable and a new animal life are sup- 
planting the old now on the road to obliteration. The 
ruin is pathetic, but inevitable. 



2 BY PATH AND TEAIL. 

So before the old shall have entirely vanished, it is well 
that we should look upon what yet remains and hand 
down to an unprivileged future a description and a ver- 
bal photograph of what the country was in days gone 
by. Lower California, Sonora and the illimitable pine 
forests of the Chihuahua Range of the Sierras Madres 
yet remain in their primitive isolation and magnificent 
savagery, but, before our century expires, the immense 
solitudes, the unbroken desolation of wilderness and the 
melancholy fascination which belong to the lonel)^ desert 
and towering mountain and to sustained and unbroken 
silence will be no more. Vale, vale, aeterne vale — good- 
by, good-by for evermore. 0. C. 



;» fi 







■c „ 






CHAPTER I. 

ORIGIN OF THE FIGHTING YAQUIS. 

The ''Gran Barranca" of the Urique river in south- 
eastern Sonora is one of the greatest natural wonders 
of the earth. ''And where is Sonora?" In a northern 
corner of the territorially great republic of Mexico, just 
south of the line separating Arizona from Mexico and 
washed on its western limits by the waters of the Gulf 
of California, is the state of Sonora. Its scenic wonders, 
its superb climate, its mineral and agricultural possibili- 
ties will eventually place it in the front rank with the 
greatest and richest states of the Mexican republic. As 
yet it is practically an unsettled land and almost un- 
known to the Mexicans themselves. It awaits develop- 
ment, but promises a liberal return on invested capital. 
The Cananea copper mines are now attracting wide- 
spread interest, but while the smeltings of these mines 
and the mines themselves are rich, it is well known that 
many other prospected and as yet miopened regions con- 
tain superior ore of inexhaustible richness and abund- 
ance. Owing to the almost insurmountable difficulty of 
freighting machinery and shipping the ore these mines 
cannot now be operated on a paying basis. Gold, sil- 
ver, copper, lead, onyx, marble, hard and soft coal have 
been foimd and are known to exist in large deposits, con- 
verting Sonora into a veritable storehouse of nature. The 
lowlands and broad valleys of the state yield two crops 
a year, and these semi-tropical lands grow and mature 
nearly all the fruit and vegetable varieties of the tropical 
and temperate zones. Like the Garden of Eden, Sonora 



b BY PATH AND TEAIL. 

is watered by five beautiful rivers, and when irrigation 
is more generally introduced and the river wealth of the 
land utilized, the districts of Hermosillo, Mayo, Altar, 
Magdalena and above all, the Sonora Valley, will outrank 
in luxuriant vegetation, productiveness and richness of 
soil many of the marvelously fertile lands of Lower Mex- 
ico. 

Still, the development of all these mineral and agricul- 
tural resources has been slow and is yet very much re- 
tarded by a combination of natural and hitherto unsur- 
mountable obstacles. To construct durable bridges over 
the chasms, to tunnel giant hills, cut beds into the faces 
of adamantine mountains and build railroads into the 
great mining districts of the Sierra Madre, call for such 
a prodigious expenditure of money that the state and 
capitalists hesitate and move slowly. 

But the absence of modern methods of transportation 
has not been the only drawback to the development of 
Sonora, nor, indeed, the most serious one. Amid the 
lofty mountains and rugged hills of this wild region, the 
last of the fighting tribes of the American Indians has 
built his Torres Vedras — the fort of the broken heart 
and desperate hope — is making his last stand and fight- 
ing his last battle. You have heard of the Yaquis, the 
war hawks of the wilderness, the mountain lions of the 
Sierra Madre, the tigers of the rocks. They are all 
these in their desperate courage, in their fierceness, in 
their endurance and treachery, in their cunning an.d de- 
spair. 

In this desolation of wilderness, behind impregnable 
rocks, these fierce men have fought the soldiers of Spain 
and the rangers of Mexico to a ** standstill." These are 
they who say to Mexico, "Until you make peace with us, 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. / 

until you grant our conditions, until you settle with us, 
no Mexican, no American will work the mines or till the 
soil in our land." 

And who are these men who challenge the strength 
of Mexico? Who and what are the Yaquis? Before 
coming to Sonora I endeavored to inform myself on the 
history of this extraordinary tribe, for, like the Roman 
Terence, whatever is human interests me — ''''homo 
sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto." I had read in 
the American and Mexican newspapers, from time to 
time, terrible things about this mountain tribe. I read 
in "El Mundo," a Mexican paper of the date of Febru- 
ary 28, 1907, that ' ' a Yaqui Indian who had just emptied 
a fifteen-pound can of cyanide of potassium into the mu- 
nicipal waterworks reservoir at Hermosillo was caught 
in the act and shot by the authorities. A new terror is 
added to the situation in the Sonora country since the 
Yaquis have learned the deadly nature of the poison 
which is so largely used in mining operations and is so 
easily accessible to desperadoes like the Yaquis." Late 
in December, 1907, I read in another paper published in 
Torin: "A marauding band of Yaquis entered the vil- 
lage of Lencho, killed six men and two women and 
wounded four other Mexicans. As soon as the firing was 
heard at Torin, three miles from where the massacre oc- 
curred and where 2,000 troops are stationed, G-eneral 
Lorenzo Torres took the field in pursuit of the Yaquis. 
The soldiers will remain out until the Indians are killed 
or captured. ' ' Killed or captured ! Well, for 400 years 
of known time the Spanish or Mexican troops have, with 
occasional periods of truce, been killing and capturing 
this solitary tribe, and strange to relate the warriors of 
the tribe will not stay killed or captured. On June 12, 



8 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

1908, a Guaymas morning paper published this dis- 
patch: "A special from Hermosillo, says 4,000 Mex- 
ican soldiers mider the personal command of Gen. 
Lorenzo Torres, are in the country in hot pursuit of the 
Yaqui Indians. All negotiations looking toward the 
signing of the peace treaty were suddenly broken off 
this afternoon. The Yaquis insisted on retaining their 
arms and ammunition, after having acceded to every 
other stipulation of the Mexican government. The Mexi- 
can officers stood steadfast, and the Yaquis withdrew 
from the conference. Immediately orders were dis- 
patched to the Mexican troops in the field to resume hos- 
tilities. It is not believed that the campaign will last 
long as the Mexican troops have all the water holes in 
the Yaqui country surrounded." 

For the past fifty years, on and off, the Mexican sol- 
diers in battalions, companies and isolated commands 
have been chasing through the mountains these stubborn 
and half -civilized fighters. In the few last years the 
Yaquis have become more dangerous and daring, more 
cunning in their methods of attack, and as they are now 
armed with modern rifles they are a most serious menace 
to the progress and development of central and southern 
Sonora. 

Who, then, are the Yaquis ? Back in the days when the 
race, known to us as the American Indian, was the sole 
owner of the two great continents of North and South 
America, an immense region, in what is now northwest- 
ern Canada, was possessed by a great nation known as 
the Athasbascan, from which the territory of Athabasca 
and the great river flowing through it take their names. 
One division of this numerous nation are laiown to-day 
as Tinnes or Dinnes, and may have been so called in 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 9 

those early days. For some cause unknown to us, a 
tribal family, numbering perhaps a thousand, quarreled 
with their kinsmen or became dissatisfied with their 
lands, separated from their brothers and went in quest 
of new hunting grounds. They crossed a continent, pass- 
ing in peace through the lands of other tribes and cut- 
ting a passage for themselves through hostile nations. 
They arrived at last, it may be in a hundred, two hun- 
dred years, in the land now known as New Mexico and 
Arizona, possessed and tilled by an agricultural and 
peaceable people, differing in customs, manners, super- 
stitions, and in origin and language. They decided to 
settle here. The Zuni, Moki, Yumas — call them what we 
may — contested the right of the Dinnes to live in their 
country. The invaders, compared to the established na- 
tions, were few in numbers, but they were trained fight- 
ers. They were lanky men of toughened fibre and mus- 
cle, the sons of warrior sires who had fought their way 
through tribe, clan and nation, and willed to their sons 
and grandsons their only estate and property, courage, 
endurance, agility, strategy in war and cunning in the 
fight. The Dinn6s, let us call them by their modern 
name the Apaches, woefully outclassed in numbers by 
the people upon whose lands they had intruded, were 
wise. Fighting in the open, if they lost but ten men in 
battle and the Zuni and Moki lost forty, in the end the 
Zuni and Moki must win out. The Apaches took to the 
mountains. The Zuni had no stomach for mountain 
fighting. The Apaches raided their villages, attacked 
like lions and disappeared like birds. They swept the 
Salt River valley clean and where at one time there was 
a sedentary population of 50,000 or 60,000 there was now 
a desert. Those of the original owners who escaped fled 



10 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

to the recesses and dark places of the Grand canyon or 
to the inaccessible cliffs where the Spaniards found them 
and called them ''burrow people," and where hundreds 
of years afterward the Americans discovered them and 
christened them "cliff dwellers." 

There are no records on stone or paper to tell us 
when these things happened; there is no tradition to in- 
form us when the Dinnes entered the land or when the 
devastation began. We only know that when the Span- 
iards came into Arizona in 1539, the ''Casa Grande," 
the great house of the last of the early dwellers, was a 
venerable ruin. 

The Apaches now increased and multiplied, they 
spread out and divided into tribes. One division trav- 
eled south and settled along the slopes of the Bacatete 
mountains and in the valley of a river to which they gave 
their name. When this settlement took place we do not 
know, we only know that when Father Marcos de Nizza 
entered Sonora, the first of white men, in 1539, this tribe 
of the Apaches called themselves Yaqui, and possessed 
the land. So now you can understand why the Spaniards 
found the Yaquis tough customers to deal with and why 
the Mexicans after sixty years of intermittent war have 
not yet conquered them. The Yaqui claims descent from 
the wolf, and he has all the qualities and characteristics 
of the wolf to make good his claim. 

Centuries of training in starvation, of exposure to 
burning heat, to thirst, to mountain storms and to suffer- 
ing have produced a man almost as hardy as a cactus, as 
fertile in defense, as swift of foot and as distinctly a 
type of the wilderness and the desert as his brother, the 
coyote. 

From the earliest Spanish records we learn that this 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 11 

fierce tribe resisted the intrusion and settlement in their 
country of any foreign race. One of the conditions of a 
treaty made with them by the early Spaniards permitted 
the exploitation of the mineral wealth of the country. 
Villages were built and camps established from time to 
time, but when the Yaquis or Mexicans broke the peace, 
these camps and towns were left desolate. 

It is impossible, for one who has not seen Sonora to 
imagine the ravages wrought in a country for which na- 
ture has done so much. 

The name "Infelix" — unhappy — given to it by the 
early missionary fathers, in sympathy with its misfor- 
tunes, was portentous of its miseries. The ravages 
of the Yaquis were everywhere visible a few years ago, 
and in many places, even to-day, the marks of their ven- 
geance tell of their ferocity. By small parties and by 
secret passes of the mountains they sweep down upon, 
surprise and attack the lonely traveler or train of trav- 
elers or a village, slaughter the men and carry off the 
women and children. Then, in their mountain lairs and 
in the security of isolation, the mothers are separated 
from their children and the children incorporated into 
the tribe, and in time become Yaqui mothers and Yaqui 
warriors. This is the secret of the vitality and perpe- 
tuity of the Yaqui tribe. If it were not for this practice 
of stealing children and incorporating them into the 
tribal body, the Yaquis would long ago have been anni- 
hilated. Marcial, Benevidea, Bandalares, prominent 
Yaqui chiefs, were child captives and many of their 
council and war chiefs are half-breeds. And now here is 
an extraordinary, and, perhaps, an unprecedented fact in 
the history of the human race outside of the Ottoman 
empire. Of the Indians warring against a civilized and 



12 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

a white nation, one-third are whites, one-half half-castes 
and many of the rest carry in their veins white blood. 
On the other hand, the civilized troops who now, and for 
the past fifty years, have been waging war on the Yaquis, 
following them to their haunts, hunting them in the fast- 
ness of their mountain, are all Indians and half-breeds. 



CHAPTER II. 

ON THE WAY TO THE BARRANCA. 

To the traveler from the northern and eastern regions 
of America, Mexico is and always will be a land of en- 
chantment. Its weird and romantic history, its unfa- 
miliar and gorgeously flowering vines, its thorny and 
mysteriously protected plants called cacti, its strange 
tribes o£ unknown origin, its towering mountains, vol- 
canoes and abysses of horrent depths prepare the mind 
for the unexpected and for any surprise. Still, the stag- 
gering tales I heard here, at Guaymas, of the wonders of 
the Gran Barranca and the matchless scenery of the 
Sierra Madre gave me pause. The Sierras Madres are a 
range of mountains forming the backbone of Mexico, 
from which all the other ridges of this great country 
stretch away, and to which all isolated spurs and solitary 
mountains are related. This stupendous range of moun- 
tains probably rose from the universal deep, like the 
Laurentian granites, when God said ''let there be light, 
and light was," and will remain till the Mighty Angel 
comes down from heaven and "swears by Him that liv- 
eth forever, that time shall be no more. ' ' 

From the breasts and bosom of this tremendous range 
rise mountains of individual greatness, towering one 
above the other. Here are sublime peaks of imperishable 
material that lift their spires into ethereal space, and 
whose snow roofed sides receive and reflect the rays of 
an eternal snn. Here, also, are horrent gorges which ter- 
rify the gaze — vast abysses where there is no day and 
where eternal silence reigns ; dead volcanoes whose era- 



14 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

ters are a desolation of emptiness and whose sides are 
ripped and gashed down to the very foothills, black with 
lava and strewn with scoriae. Of the time when these 
mighty hills belched forth flame and fire, reverberated 
with explosive gases, and the crash of the elements that 
rocked the earth and sent down scoriae torrents which 
devoured life and overwhelmed and effaced valleys no 
tongue may speak. Through that part of the wonderful 
Sierra dividing the states of Chihuahua and Sonora, 
flows, through depths immeasurable to man, the Urique 
river, whose flow when in flood is an ungovernable tor- 
rent, and when in repose is a fascination. 

Thousands of years ago the streams and rivulets 
formed by the thawing of the niountain snow on the 
Sierra's crests and slopes zigzagged, now here, now there 
searching a path to the sea. On their seaward race they 
were joined by innumerable recruits, springs issuing 
from the crevassed rocks, brooks stealing away from 
dark recesses, runlets, rills and streamlets, till in time 
the confederate waters became a formidable river which 
conquered opposition and fought its way to the sea. 
This is the Urique, and for untold ages there has been no 
''let up" to its merciless and tireless onslaught on the 
porphyritic and sandstone walls that in the dark ages 
challenged its right to pass on. Through these formid- 
able barriers it has ripped a right of way, and into their 
breasts of adamant it has cut a frightful gash of varying 
width and, in places, more than a mile deep. This aw- 
ful wound is known as the Gran Barranca, and with its 
weird settings amid terrifying solitudes is, perhaps, the 
greatest natural wonder in America. 

I have visited the Grand Canyon of Arizona, and am 
familiar with Niagara Falls and its wondrous gorge, but 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 15 

now, that I have returned after passing eight days amid 
the towering peaks, the perpendicular walls, the frightful 
abysses, the dark and gloomy depths of precipitous can- 
yons, and, above all, the immense and awful silence of 
the Great Barranca, I confess I feel like one who has 
come out of an opiate sleep and doubts he is yet awake. 

From the quaint and tropical town of Guaymas on the 
Gulf of California — still called by the Mexicans the Gulf 
of Cortez — I began my journey for the Gran Barranca. 
Accompanied by a Mayo guide I joined, by invitation, 
the party of Don Alonzo Espinosa, who, with his son and 
daughter, was leaving to visit his mine in the La Dura 
range. With us went four rifle bearing Yaquis, Chris- 
tianized members of the fierce mountain tribe that has 
given and is yet giving more trouble to the Mexican gov- 
ernment than all the Indians of the republic. 

The distance from Guaymas to the Gran Barranca 
is about 200 miles, and it is idle to say that through these 
rough mountain lands, there are no railroads, no stages, 
nor indeed facilities for travel save on foot or mule 
back. Noble and serviceable as the horse may be, no 
one here would dream of trusting his life to him on the 
steep and narrow trails of the Sierras. The small Mexi- 
can burro or donkey is as wise as a mountain goat, as 
sure of foot as a Eocky Mountain sheep, and when left 
to himself will, day or night, safely carry you by the 
rim of the most dangerous precipice. We left Guaymas 
at 4 a. m. At Canoncito we met a train of loaded burros 
driven by men cloathed in zarapes, white cotton pants 
and sombreros, and, like ourselves, taking advantage of 
the early morning and its refreshing coolness. Now and 
then we passed a solitary "jackal" or hut from whose 
door yelling curs sallied forth to dispute our right of 



16 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

way. We were now entering the land of the cactus, that 
mysterious plant so providentially protected against the 
hunger of bird or beast. Bristling from top to root with 
innumerable spines of the size and hardness of a cam- 
bric or darning needle, the Mexican cactus is a living 
manifestation of a prescient, omnipotent and di\dne per- 
sonality. From the diminutive singa, which grows in 
waterless regions, and whose bark when chewed gives re- 
lief to the parched tongue, to the giant Suhauro towering 
to the height of forty or fifty feet, and whose pulp holds 
gallons of water, the cactus in its 685 species or varieties 
is a marvel of diversity and a fascinating study for the 
botanist. 

At 10 o'clock we halted for breakfast at the home of 
Signor Mathias Duran, an old and hospitable friend of 
Don Alonzo. Here I noticed with pleasure and edifica- 
tion the survival of an old Spanish greeting which has 
outlived the vicissitudes of time and modern innovations. 

Mr. Duran was standing on his veranda shouting a 
welcome to his friend, who, dismounting, shook hands 
with his host and exclaimed: ''Deo gratias" (thanks be 
to God) and Duran, still holding his guest's hand, spoke 
back: "Para siempre henidito sea Dios y la siempre 
Virgin Maria; pase adelante, amigo mio." (Forever 
blessed be God and the holy Virgin Mary; come in, my 
friend.) To me, coming from afar, this language sound- 
ed as an echo from the Ages of Faith, and I marvelled at 
the colloquial piety and childlike simplicity of these cul- 
tured and valiant gentlemen. Late that afternoon we 
entered the tribal lands of the Yaquis, and our armed 
escort now became somebodies and began to preen them- 
selves on their courage and vigilance. And they were no 
ordinary men, these civilized Yaquis. On a long journey 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 17 

they would wear down any four men of the Japhetic 
stock. Of sensitive nostril, sharp ear and keen eye, noth- 
ing of any import passed unnoticed, and if it came to 
a brush with Mexican ''hold-ups" or mountain bandits 
these Indian guards could be trusted to acquit themselves 
as brave men. 

Half of the fierce and one time numerous Yaquis were 
long ago converted to Christianity by Spanish priests 
and have conformed to the ways of civilized man. They 
work in the mines, cultivate patches of ground and are 
employed on the few rancherias and around the hacien- 
das to be found in Sonora. Others are in the service of 
the government, holding positions as mail carriers and 
express runners. In places almost inaccessible to man, 
in eeries hidden high up in the mountains, in cul-de-sacs 
of the canyons, are mining camps having each its own 
little postoffice. The ojGQce may be only a cigar box 
nailed to a post, or soap box on a veranda, but once a 
week, or it may be only once a month, the office receives 
and delivers the mail. Night or day the Yaqui mail run- 
ner may come, empty the box, drop in his letters, and, 
like a coyote, is off again for the next camp, perhaps 
thirty miles across the mountains. Clad only in bullhide 
sandals and breechclout, the Yaqui mail bearer can out- 
run and distance across the rough mountain trails any 
horse or burro that was ever foaled. Don Alonzo tells 
me — and I believe him — that, before the government 
opened the road from Chihuahua to El Eosario, a dis- 
tance of 500 Spanish miles (450 of ours) a Tarahumari 
Indian carried the mail regularly in six days, and after 
resting one day, returned to Chihuahua in the same time. 
The path led over mountains from 4,000 to 6,000 feet 
high, by the rim of deep precipices, across bridgeless 



18 BY PATH AND TEAIL. 

streams and rivers, and through a land bristling with 
cacti and thorny yucca. 

Nor will this extraordinary feat seem incredible to 
readers familiar with Prescott's History of Mexico. It 
is recorded by the historian that two days after the land- 
ing of the Spaniards on the eastern coast of Mexico, pic- 
torial drawings of the strangers, of their ships, horses, 
mail and weapons were delivered into the hands of Mon- 
tezuma by express runners, who covered the distance 
from Vera Cruz to the Aztec capital — 263 miles — in 
thirty-six hours. In that time they ascended from the 
ocean 8,000 feet, traversing a land broken with depres- 
sions and ravines and sown with innumerable liills, bar- 
rancas and aroyos. 

As we advanced, the trail grew ever steeper, ever 
rougher, ever more confused by the inexplicable v/ind- 
ings and protruding elbows that pushed out from the 
granite walls as if to challenge our advance. How the 
ancient, angry waters must have roared through these 
narrow passages when the torrential rains were abroad 
on these high peaks, and the swollen streams, leaping 
from ledge to level, swelled the rushing flood! Above 
our heads there rose three thousand feet of porphyritic 
rock, but we had no consciousness of it, no foreboding of 
danger, no fear, no chill. 

We were now in a gorge of the Bacatete mountains, 
where, a year ago, the Yaquis ambushed and slaughtered 
the Meza party, leaving their mangled bodies in this 
narrow gorge between Ortiz and La Dura. The report 
of the massacre was brought to Ortiz by an Indian ex- 
press runner, who passed through the defile at break of 
day and identified the bodies. Senor Pedro Meza, a 
wealthy mine owner and one of the most prominent men 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 19 

in the district, accompanied by his wife and daughters, 
Senoritas Carmen, Elvira, Eloisa and Panchetta — six- 
Senoritas Carmen, Elvira, Eloisa and Panchetta — sixteen, 
eighteen, twenty and twenty-three years — left Guaymas 
early one morning for La Dura. At Ortiz they halted for 
refreshments, where they were joined by Senor Theobold 
Hoff, his wife and son, a young man twenty-three years 
old. There was apparently no reason for alarm, for the 
Mexican troops and the Yaqui warriors were fighting it 
out eighty miles to the east. 

When the Indians ambushed them, the men of the party 
charged desperately up the slope to draw the Yaquis' 
fire, shouting to the ladies to drive on and save them- 
selves. The women refused to abandon the men, and 
when a company of Mexican Rurales (mounted police) ar- 
rived on the scene, Pedro Meza, his family and guests 
were numbered with the dead. 

As I propose in another place to give a brief his- 
tory of this formidable tribe, I confine myself here to 
the statement that the Yaquis are now and have been for 
the past three hundred years, the boldest and fiercest 
warriors within the limits of Mexico and Central Amer- 
ica. 

I passed the night under the friendly roof of Don 
Alonzo, and early the next morning with my Mayo guide 
and companion continued my journey to the Gran Bar- 
ranca. Far away to the southeast towered the volcanic 
mount, the Sierra de los Ojitos, whose shaggy flanks and 
heaving ridges are covered with giant pines, and on 
whose imperial crest the clouds love to rest before they 
open and distribute impartially their waters between the 
Atlantic and the Pacific, through the Gulfs of Mexico 
and California. 



20 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

The trail now becomes steeper and narrower, carrying 
us through an inspiring panorama of isolated mounts, 
huge rocks and colossal bowlders standing here and there 
in battlemented and castellated confusion. Stretching 
away to the south and extending for hundreds of miles, 
even to the valley of Tierra Blanca, was the great conife- 
rous or pine forest of the Sierras Madres, the reserves 
of the paleto deer, the feeding grounds of the peccary or 
wild hog and the haunts of the mountain bear and the 
jaguar or Mexican spotted tiger. This great pine range 
is the largest virgin forest in North America, and for 
unnumbered ages has reposed and still reposes in its 
awful isolation. 

In the early Miocene age, when God was preparing 
the earth for the coming of man, this immense wilder- 
ness was the feeding ground of mighty animals now ex- 
tinct and, at a later period, of the fierce ancestors of 
those now roaming through the desolation of its solitude. 
The decay of forest wealth and the disintegration of its 
animal life eternally going on have superimposed upon 
the primitive soil a loam of inexhaustible richness. Un- 
fortunately there is no water to river its timber, but 
when the time comes, as come it will, when its produce 
can be freighted, this forest will be of incalculable com- 
mercial value to Mexico, and as profitable to the republic 
as are her enormously rich mines. 

The mountains, isolated cones and the face of the 
land, as we proceeded, began to assume weird and fan- 
tastic shapes. Wind and water chiseling, carving and 
cutting for thousands of years, have produced a pano- 
rama of architectural deceptions bewildering to man. 
These soulless sculptors and carvers, following a myste- 
rious law of origin and movement, have evolved from 



BY PATH AND TKAIL, 21 

the sandstone hills an amazing series of illusions and 
have cut out and fashioned monumental designs of the 
most curious and fantastic forms. Here are battlements, 
towers, cathedrals, buttresses and flying buttresses. 
Away to our left are giant figures, great arches and ar- 
chitraves, and among heaps of debris from fallen col- 
umns there is flourishing the wonderful madrona or 
strawberry tree, with blood-red bark, bright green and 
yellow leaves, and in season, covered with waxen white 
blossoms, impossible of imitation on wood or canvas. 

The wild turkeys are calling from cliff to cliff and the 
wilderness is yielding food to them. The intense silence 
weighs upon the soul, the stupendous hills bear to the 
mind a sensation of awe and sublimity. I look around 
me and see everywhere titanic mountains roughly garbed 
in hoary vegetation; the vision carrys me back to a for- 
mative period before time was, ''when the earth was 
void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the 
deep ; and the Spirit of God moved upon the waters and 
said let land appear. ' ' 

And now, as we advance, the scenery suddenly becomes 
grander and more sublime, surpassing great in its awful 
solitude, its tremendous strength and terrifying size. 
The spirit of man, in harmony with the majesty of his 
surroundings and the matchless splendor of these silent 
monimients to God's creative power, ought to expand 
and grow large, but the soul is dwarfed and dominated 
by the sense of its own littleness in the presence of the 
infinite creative Mind which called from the depths and 
gave form to this awful materiality, and, down through 
the ages there comes to him the portentous call of the 
Holy Spirit, "Where was thou, man, when I laid the 



22 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

foundations of these hills, when the morning stars sang 
together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" 

Late in the afternoon we came out from a dense forest 
of lofty pines and at once we stood upon the very edge 
of the precipice and gazed into and across the "Gran 
Barranca." My position was on a broad rock platform 
overhanging the great canyon, and from it I looked down 
a sheer three thousand feet to where the palms and pines 
meet and part again. Here was the zone of separation, 
the pine moving up to the ^Hierra fria," the cold land, 
and the palm sloping down to its own home, the ' ' tierra 
caliente,^^ the hot land. The melancholy murmur of the 
winds ascending from the sepulchre of the silent river, 
flowing three thousand feet below, but made the sense of 
loneliness more oppressive. From the table of the 
mountain that sloped above me and down to the 
waters of the dark-red river below, was six thousand 
feet of almost perpendicular depth. Away to the south 
was the Vale of the Churches, so-called from the weird 
architectural monuments carved and left standing in the 
wilderness by the erratic and mysterious action of the 
winds intermittently at work for ages. 

From where I was standing the mining camp of El 
E-osario appeared as if pitched in an open plain, but it 
is really on a promontory between two "barrancas" or 
ravines, and beyond it the land is broken and falls away 
in terraces till it meets the purple mountains of Sahuar- 
ipa. Indeed, the little village on this tremendous ridge is 
surrounded by lofty mountains. Looking down and be- 
yond where the graceful palms have placed themselves, 
just where an artist would have them in the foreground 
of his picture, the view is a revelation. Far away is the 
long mountain range, gashed with ominous wounds, out 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 23 

of which in season streams flow, where formidable prom- 
ontories reach out, and peaks and cones of extinct craters 
tell of elemental wars. To my right, stretching away for 
miles, the land is one vast tumultuous mass of giant bowl- 
ders, of stubborn cacti and volcanic rocks. Many of these 
erupted rocks still carry the black marks of the fire from 
which they escaped in times geologically near. 

How many thousands of years, we know not since 
these porphyritic hills were heaved up and wasted to a 
dark wine purple or these adamantine ledges burned to 
a terra cotta orange. Here, scattered along or cropping 
out of the faces of the towering cliffs, are metamorphic 
rocks and conglomerates — slates, shales, syenites and 
grit stones — and here and there dust of copper, brim- 
stone and silver blown against the granite walls and 
blackened as if oxidized by fire. The porphyritic hills 
bear ugly marks upon their sides, cicatriced wounds re- 
ceived in the days when ''the deep called to the deep and 
the earth opened at the voice of the floodgates." 



CHAPTER III. 

BATTLE OF THE ELEMENTS. 

The Gran Barranca or Grand Canyon of Sonora is 
without contradiction one of the great natural wonders 
of the earth. It is not known to the outside world; it 
has no place in the guide books or in the geographies of 
Mexico, and is seldom visited by men possessed of a 
sense of admiration for the sublime or appreciation for 
the wonderful works of God. The Arctic explorer, Lieu- 
tenant G. A. Schwatka, in his "Cave and Cliff Dwellers," 
devotes a chapter to the awesome region, and, so far as 
I know, is the only writer who has ever visited and re- 
corded in English his impressions of the great canyon 
and its stupendous setting. 

Nor is this absence of information to be considered 
something surprising. Sixty years ago the Grand Can- 
yon of Arizona was practically unknown to Europe and 
indeed to the United States. Few ever heard of the 
stupendous gorge, and of these few there were those who 
deemed the reports of its wonders greatly exaggerated. 
Indeed, Arizona itself half a century ago was an unex- 
plored and unknown land to the great mass of the Ameri- 
can people. Even to-day there are regions of the im- 
mense territory as savage and unknown as they were one 
hundred years ago. Back of the mining camps in the 
gulf districts and the river lands under cultivation, So- 
nora to-day is an unsurveyed and indeed an unexplored 
land. The fighting Yaquis are yet in possession of vast 
regions of Sonora, and until they surrender or are con- 



26 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

quered by the Mexicans there will be no civilization for 
the state. 

Tf we accept the Grand Canyon of Arizona as it was 
fifty years ago, there is not upon the earth any forma- 
tion like that of the Gran Barranca. The railroad, the 
modern hotel and the endless procession of mere and 
very often vulgar sightseers, have commonized the Graild 
Canyon and its wonderful surroundings. The curio 
shops, the hawkers of sham aboriginal ''finds," the ob- 
trusive guides, the inquisitive tourist, have vulgarized the 
approaches to the Arizona wonder, and robbed it of its 
preternatural solitude, its awful isolation and weird ro- 
mance. Again the exaggerated and distorted descrip- 
tions of railroad folders, of correspondents and of maga- 
zine writers, have created in the public mind perverted 
and unreasonable expectations impossible of realization. 
Take away from any of the great natural wonders of 
the earth the dowers and gifts of the Creator, the haze 
of sustained silence, the immense solitude, the entire 
separation from human homes and human lives, the sav- 
age wealth of forest growth and forest decay — dissolve 
these and, for all time, you mar their glory and matchless 
fascination. This is what the greed of man and his lust 
for gold have done for the Garden of the Gods, for the 
Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls. But what avail our 
regrets and protests? Kismet, it is fate; we must sur- 
render to the inevitable, ' ' and to lament the consequence 
is vain." 

Here among these untenanted wilds, surrounded by 
igneous and plutonic hills of immeasurable age, the 
Gran Barranca of the Urique reposes in all its savage 
magnificence and all its primeval solitude. Never had I 
seen a panorama of such primitive loveliness and of 



BY PATH AND TKAIL. 27 

such wild and imposing appearance. The absence of all 
sound was startling, and the sense of isolation oppres- 
sive. Tennyson's lines in his "Dream of Fair Women," 
visited me : 

' ' There was no motion in the dumb, dead air, 
Nor any song of bird or sound of rill. 
Gross darkness of the inner sepulchre 
Was not so deadly still." 

In heaven or on earth there was not a sound to break 
the uncanny stillness, save alone the solitary call of 
some vagrant bird which but made the silence more 
severe. 

Three miles to westward were the cones of the Sierras 
thrown up and distorted by refraction into airy, fantas- 
tic shapes which, at times, altered their outlines like unto 
a series of dissolving views. Above them all, high in air; 
rose the Pico de Navajas, now veiled in a drifting cloud 
of fleecy whiteness, but soon to come out and stand clear 
cut against a sapphire sky. Here and there the moun- 
tains were cleft apart by some Titanic force, leaving 
deep, narrow gorges and wild ravines, where sunlight 
never enters and near which the eye is lost in the t^vilight 
o£ a soft purple haze. With a field glass I swept the ter- 
rifying solitude, and the landscape, expanded by the lens, 
now grew colossal. Around me, and afar off, in this des- 
olation of silence and loneliness, stood in isolated majes- 
ty, weird architectural figures, as if phantoms of the 
imagination had materialized into stone. Huge irregu- 
lar shafts and bowlders of granite and gneissoid, left 
standing after the winds and rains had dissolved the 
softer sand and limestones, assumed familiar, but in 



28 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

this untenanted wilderness, unexpected examples of the 
builder's art. In this tumultuous land, lonely and forbid- 
ding rose ''cloud capped towers and gorgeous palaces," 
vast rotundas, cathedral spires and rocks of shapeless 
forms. 

Between me and the valley which bloomed with tropi- 
cal life far down by the flowing waters, lay a lava lake, 
where tumbling waves of fire in Miocene times were 
frozen into frigidity, as if God had said, "Here let the 
billows stiffen and have a rest." Over this desolate 
plain of black, igneous matter, in a sky of opalescent 
clearness, two eagles, playmates of the mountain storm, 
were crossing and apparently making for the pine lands 
of Iquala, whose lofty peak is suffused with roseate blush 
long before the mists and darkness are out of the val- 
ley. Sometime in the palasozoic age, in the days when 
God said, "Let the waves that are under the heaven be 
gathered together into one place and let the day and 
land appear," these great mountains were heaved up, 
invading the region of the clouds. And the clouds re- 
sented the intrusion, and at once began an attack on the 
adamantine fortifications. In this war of the elements 
the clouds must "win out," for before the morning 
of eternity the clouds will have pulverized the mountains 
into dust. These wandering, tempest-bearing clouds, 
with restless energy, are ever hurling their allied forces 
of wind and rain against the fronts and flanks of their 
enemies and, with marvelous cunning, are gnawing away 
their porphyritic strength, cutting deep gashes in their 
sides, separating individual bodies and fashioning them 
into towering masses of isolated and architecturally won- 
derful formations. 

The torrential rains and melting snows have rushed 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 29 

down the rugged slopes and opened ghastly wounds in 
the sides of the mountains. These wounds are the deep 
gulches, the dark ravines and abysses of horrent and 
gloomy depths where sunlight never enters. The run- 
lets, streams and hurrying waters were rushing to a com- 
mon meeting and as they fled they left scars on the face 
of their enemy and the clouds were avenged. And when 
these fluid auxiliaries met together each one of them car- 
ried to the common center large contributions of silt 
and sand, spoils torn from the foe. The mountains rolled 
huge rocks upon their enemies, poured liquid, fiery tor- 
rents of molten masses which hardening into metallic 
shrouds covered the land and obliterated the courses and 
beds of the streams. But raw auxiliaries and recruits 
came from the region of the clouds, opened new chan- 
nels, massed their strength, and together cut into and 
through the great mountains a frightful gash one mile 
deep and many miles long. Through this gash flows the 
Urique river as blood flows from a gaping wound, and 
as I looked down and into the dark abyss, I thought I 
saw Kubla Khan gazing into the gloomy depths of 
Anadu — 

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
Through caverns, measureless to man, 
Down to the silent sea. 

Before, above and around me was a panorama of un- 
surpassed sublimity, a tremendous manifestation of the 
creative will of God, a co-mingling of natural wonders 
and elemental forces proclaiming to man the omnipo- 
tence of God and the glory of the Lord. To the material 
mind the land around me is ''desert land, a place of hor- 
ror and of waste wilderness, which cannot be sowed, nor 



30 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

bringeth forth figs, nor vines, nor pomegranates, ' ' but to 
the man of meditation and of faith it is a land where the 
majesty of omnipotence is enthroned and the voice of 
Creation supreme. 

From the granite spur, on which I stood, I looked upon 
and into the Gran Barranca, the great canyon of the 
Urique, into and over as grand a view of massive crags, 
sculptured rocks and devastation of fire and water as 
ever the eye of man gazed upon. Surrounded by shaggy 
mountains of towering height, by plutonic hills of im- 
measurable age and of every geological epoch, by meta- 
morphic formations, weird and unfamiliar, the Gran Bar- 
ranca reposes in majestic isolation, waiting for the 
highly civilized man to approach, wonder and admire. 
The savage who has no ideals, has no sense of that which 
answers and conforms to what civilized man calls the 
beautiful, the terrific or the sublime, and for him the 
creations of God have no elevating influence on the mind. 
The sense of the appreciation of the sublime and the 
wonderful in nature is acquired by culture and depends 
on complex associations of mental attributes. High taste 
for the beauties of harmony and the grand in nature, and 
a sensitive feeling for sound or form or color do not be- 
long to the man with the bow, or, indeed, to the man with 
the hoe. 

The Yaqui, who lives surrounded by the hills on which 
God has stamped the seal of His omnipotence, where the 
departing sun floods the heavens with a cataract of fiery 
vermilion, crimson and burnished gold and where tKe 
sky is of opalescent splendor, stares unmoved, for he has 
not even the pictorial sense, and so this marvelous crea- 
tion of God and work of the elements still awaits the ap- 
proach of admiration and of praise. 



BY PATH AND TKAIL. 31 

To describe the stupendous mountain landscape of the 
Gran Barranca itself transcends the possibilities of lan- 
guage. The grandeur of the panorama and the massive- 
ness overwhelm you, and though the mind expands with 
the genius of the place, yet piecemeal you must break to 
separate contemplation the might and majesty of the 
great whole. Only by so doing may the soul absorb the 
elemental glory of the matchless scene. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

VALLEY OF THE CHURCHES. 

The greatest of American scenic painters, Thomas 
Moran, roamed for three months through the Grand 
Canyon of Arizona, making sketches of the strange for- 
mations, catching, as best he could, the play of light and 
shade and the glory of the sunsets when the heavens 
were bathed in chromatic light. He went home and fin- 
ished his famous painting, "The Grand Canyon of the 
Colorado River." His canvas was hung in the capitol 
at Washington — the highest recognition of his genius his 
country could confer upon him — yet Moran proclaimed 
that it was impossible for man to paint the splendor of 
the canyon when the heavens, at times, are turned to 
blood. 

I have already mentioned that the porphyritic moun- 
tains still bear the marks of elemental wars, of gaping 
wounds opened in the Titanic combats of past days. 
These are the deep ravines, the narrow fissures and 
strange openings left when the mountains were wedged 
asunder, or when torrential storms broke upon the great 
hills and, forming into rivers, tore their way to the low- 
lands. 

In those remote times, gases of enormous power of 
expansion were imprisoned in the wombs of these moun- 
tains, then air and water entered, the gases became com- 
bustibile and were converted into actual flames, till the 
rocks melted and the metals changed to vapors and the 
vapors liquefied and, expanding in their fierce wrath, 



34 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

burst asunder the walls of their mountain prison and 
fought their way to freedom. Then, amid the roar of es- 
caping steam, the gleam of lightning and the crash of 
thunder, the molten mass in riotous exultation rushed 
down the body of the monstrous hill, hissing like a thing 
alive and flooding the land with fire and smoke. Some 
awful cataclysm such as this must have occurred in the 
time and in the land of the patriarchs, in the days when 
Isaiah spoke to God, reminding him of the past, "When 
thou didst terrible things, which we looked not for. Thou 
earnest down and the mountains flowed down at thy pres- 
ence. ' ' 

But the dominating feature of the terrifying scene was 
not so much its transcendent majesty and isolation as its 
air of great antiquity. Turning and looking up I saw 
a vast structure of adamant, of black gnessoid, shale and 
shist, traversed by dykes of granite that were old when 
the waters of the great deep submerged the domes of the 
highest mountains. Gazing upon these mighty hills, 
hoary with age, I asked aloud the portentous question 
of Solomon : ' ' Is there anything of which it may be said, 
see, this is new; it hath already been of old time which 
was before us?" The measuring capacit\^ of the mind is 
unequal to the demands of such magnitude, for there is 
here no standard adjustable to the mind; perspectives 
are illusive, distances are deceptive, for yonder cliff 
changes its color, shape and size as clouds of greater or 
lesser density approach it. It seems near, almost unto 
touch, yet the finger-stone which you throw toward it 
falls almost at your feet, for the cliff is full two miles 
beyond you. From the floor of the canyon to the sum- 
mit of yonder hill is twelve times the height of the tallest 
monument in America. To acquire a sense of intimacy 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 35 

with this Barranca, a mentcfl grasp of detail and a per- 
ception of its immensity, you must descend the sides of 
the granite rock which walls the awful depths. To the 
man who possesses the gift of appreciation of the ter- 
rific in nature, the prospect is a scene of surpassing 
splendor. The panorama is never the same, although 
you think you have examined every peak and escarp- 
ment. 

As the angle of sunlight changes there begins a ghostly 
procession of colossal forms from the further side, and 
the trees around you are silhouetted against the rocks, 
and the rocks themselves grow in bulk and stature. 

Down toward the lowlands I saw things, as if alive, 
raise themselves on the foothills. These are the giant 
Suaharos, the Candelabrum cacti and beside them was 
the yucca, a bread tree of the south, whose cream white 
flowers shone across the snakelike shadows of the 
strange cacti. The sepulchral quiet of the place, the con- 
scientiousness of the unnumbered ages past since time 
had hoared those hills and the absence of life and mo- 
tion filled me with sensations of awe and reverence. 

When darkness shrouds this region and storms of 
thunder and lightning sweep across it, penetrating the 
cavernous depths of the great gorge, and revealing the 
desolation and frightful solitude of the land, it would 
be a fit abode for the demons of Dante or the Djins of 
the southern mountains of whom the woods in other 
days told terrible tales. No man, after his sensations 
of awe have vanished and his sense of the sublime in 
nature is satisfied, may continue to gaze upon the scene 
around him, and yet admit that his mind has done jus- 
tice to the magnificence and glory of this panorama of 
one of the supremest of earth's wonders. To absorb its 



36 BY PATH AND TEATL. 

splendor the mind must beSbme familiar with the genius 
of the place, recognize the influence of the winds and 
storms on the softer material, perceive the variations of 
colors, forms and trees, till, expanding with the spirit of 
the mountains, the soul itself has grown colossal or 

Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate 
Our spirits to the size of that we contemplate. 

With my Mayo guide I camped that night on the gran- 
ite platform high up on the Gran Barranca. We saw 
the sun descend behind the great hills, the fleecy clouds, 
suspended and stationary, take on the colors of the solar 
spectrum, the stars coming out, and then — at one stride 
came the night. Early next morning we began the de- 
scent to the Valley of the Churches. The path was nar- 
row and steep, around rocks honeycombed with water 
or eaten into by zoophytes. It twisted here and there, 
through precipitous defiles, where the jagged spurs and 
salient angles of the huge cliffs shoved it dangerously 
near the rim of the precipice. We continued to descend, 
our path winding around rocky projections, across 
arroyos formed by running water in the rainy season, 
skirting the danger line of the abysses, till early in the 
afternoon when we entered the mesa or table land, where, 
in a huge basin reposes ''La Arroyo de las Iglesias" — 
the vale of the churches. It is a labyrinth of architectural 
forms, endlessly varied in design, and at times painted 
in every color known to the palette, in pure transparent 
tones of marvelous delicacy — a shifting diorama of col- 
ors — advancing into crystalline clearness or disappearing 
behind slumberous haze. 

The foliage had assumed the brilliant colors of sum- 



BY PATH AND TBAIL. 37 

mer, and from the mesa, midway between the momitains 
and the valley of the Urique, the season was marking, on 
a brilliant chromatic scale, the successive zones of vege- 
tation as they rose in regular gradations from the tropic 
floor. The atmosphere had the crystalline transparency 
which belongs to mountain air, and through it the scen- 
ery assumed a vividness of color and grandeur of out- 
line which imparted to the mind a sense of exaltation, 

"Till the dilating soul, enwrapt, transfused 
Into the mighty vision passing there 
As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven. ' ' 

The appearance instantaneously disclosed was that of 
an abandoned city, a wilderness of ruined buildings left 
standing in an endless solitude. It was a phantom city 
within which a human voice was never heard, where coy- 
otes and foxes starved and where scorpions, tarantulas 
and horned toads increased and multiplied. 

The land around was broken into terraces, and looked 
like a city wrecked by the Goths and long ago abandoned. 
For here was a forest of cathedral spires, of towers, 
great arches and architraves, battlements, buttresses and 
flying buttresses, dismantled buildings and wondrous 
domes. There are times, as the sun is declining, when 
these domes and cathedral towers glow with sheen of 
burnished gold or repose 'neath a coloring of soft pur- 
ple or a mantle of fiery vermilion. 

And how did these weird and ghostly monuments 
originate, who raised them in this wilderness and when 
were their foundations laid? 

Here is the story as it was told to me. When a mass 
or body of air becomes very warm from the direct rays 



38 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

of a blazing sun or by contact with the hot sand of a 
great plain, it looses moisture and rapidly ascends to 
higher regions in the heavens ; then other and much cold- 
er air from the sea or surrounding land rushes in to fill 
the void, and as this new atmospheric sea rolls its great 
waves into the stupendous space partially left vacant 
by the disappearing hot air, sand and grit are taken up 
and, with violent force and velocity, carried against a 
projecting cliff of soft material, separating it from the 
parent body; or again, a great sandstone hill may stand 
solitary and alone in melancholy isolation surrounded by 
hills of lesser height and magnitude. Then, year after 
year and century after century, these sand blasts cut a 
little here and a little there, till in time these spectral 
forms stand alone, and from afar, resemble in their deso- 
lation the ruins of a long-deserted city. 
• This vast amphitheater, with its great forest of monu- 
ments and weird structures, surrounded by volcanic 
cones and walled in by towering monuments is a part of 
the great Barranca. You now perceive that you are in 
a region of many canyons, and that the whole face of 
the country is covered with wounds and welts, and with 
sharply outlined and lofty hills of gneiss and quartzite 
springing from the floor of the valley. Beyond contra- 
diction, earthquakes and volcanoes at one time shook this 
place with violence. Only by the aid of an airship may 
the Gran Barranca be seen in its majestic entirety, for 
much of it lies buried in the vast and gloomy abyss 
through which the silent river flows and to which direct 
descent is impossible. 



CHAPTER V. 

FRIEND OF THE MOUNTAINEER. 

When I passed out of the Arroyo of the Churches, 
it was well on in the afternoon and the sun beat intensely 
hot upon the steep trail, while the whole atmosphere was 
motionless and penetrated with heat. No man, exper- 
ienced in mountain trails, would trust his life down these 
precipitous windings to the best horse that ever car- 
ried saddle. The long suffering "burro" or doni:ey, 
with the pace of a snail and the look of a half fool, may 
be a butt for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortuoe 
in animal histories ; he may be ridiculed and despised in 
cities and on the farm, but in the mountains, amid dan- 
gerous curves and fearful, dipping trails the donkey ife 
king of all domestic animals. 

The burro is not, as Sunday school books picture him, 
the clown and puppet of domestic beasts. He is the most 
imperturbable philosopher of the animal kingdom, the 
wisest thing in his own sphere in existence, and the best 
and truest friend of the mountaineer. Pie is a stoic 
among fatalists, a reliable staff in emergencies and an 
anchor of hope in dangerous places. Like the champion 
of the prize ring, Joe Gans, or the sporting editor's 
''king of the diamond turf," Cy Young, the donkey 
''neither drinks, nor smokes, nor chews tobacco;" in a 
word, he's a "brick." 

The greatest avalanche that ever thundered down the 
sides of the Matterhorn, the loudest detonation of vol- 
canic Vesmdus, the roll and heave and twist of Peruvian 
earthquake; any one of these or all of them "in damna- 



40 BY PATH AND TEAIL. 

ble conspiracy" could not turn a hair on the hide of his 
serene equanimity. No mountain goat, leaping from rock 
to rock, can give him pointers. He is contentment and 
self-possession personified; he will eat and digest what 
a mule dare not touch and will thrive where a horse will 
starve. Work? I have seen hills of fodder moving on 
the highway and thought with Festus that too much 
learning had made me mad, till on closer examination I 
perceived, fore and aft of these hills, enormous ears and 
scrawny, wriggling tails and under the hills little hoofs, 
the size of ordinary ink bottles. Down the dangerous 
mountain trails his head is always level, his feet sure 
as those of flies and his judgment unerring. His mus- 
cles and nerves are of steel, his blood cool as quicksilver 
in January, and his hold on life as tenacious as that of 
a buffalo cat. But more than all this, the burro is one of 
the pioneers and openers of civilization in Mexico and 
the Southwest. Patiently and without protest or com- 
plaint he has carried the packs of the explorers, pros- 
pectors, surveyors and settlers of uninhabited plateaus 
and highlands. With his endurance, his co-operation and 
reliability, it became possible to profitably work the sil- 
ver mines of Mexico and the copper mines of Arizona. 
He helped to build railroads over the Sierras and across 
the plains and deserts of New Mexico, California and 
Arizona. He brought settlers into New Mexico, into 
Arizona and the Pacific lands, and with settlers came 
progress and development, peace, education and pros- 
perity. Therefore, all hail to the burro! In grateful 
recognition of his kindness to me I owe him this commen- 
datory tribute. He has done more for civilization in 
these lands than many a senator in the halls of the capi- 
tol or LL. D. from the chair of Harvard. 



BY PATH AND TKAIL, 41 

We descended to the land of ''Las Naranjos," of the 
orange orchards and banana groves, and as the sun was 
setting entered the picturesque and ancient town of 
Urique. Founded the year Champlain first sailed the 
St. Lawrence and eight years before the Pilgrim Fath- 
ers landed on Plymouth rock. L^rique has never known 
wagon, cart, carriage or bicycle. Its archaic population 
of 3,000 souls, mostly Indians and Mexican half-castes, 
has few wants and no ambition for what we call the 
higher life. If the v/ise man seeks but contentment, 
peace and happiness in this world, these primitive people 
are wiser in their generation than we. I must confess 
that among the civilized and half civilized races of Mex- 
ico I found a cheerful resignation and more contentment 
than I expected. Unprejudiced study of their social and 
domestic life leads me to believe that there is here a 
much more equitable distribution of what we call happi- 
ness than in much busier and more brilliant life centers. 
The fertility of the arable land, the continuously warm 
climate, the abundance of wild and domestic fruit and 
the simple life of the people are bars to poverty and its 
dangerous associations. It would be well for many of 
us if we could change places with these people, drop for 
a time the life of rush and hurry and artificial living into 
which we of the North have drifted, and take up this 
dreamy, placid and uneventful existence. We deplore 
what we are pleased to term their ignorance, but are they 
not happier in their ignorance than we in our wisdom, 
and are not we of the North, at last, learning by expe- 
rience the truth of what Solomon said in the days of 
old, ''For in much learning is much grief, and he that 
increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." 

The delightful little gardens and patches of vegeta- 



42 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

ble land stolen from the mountain present a dozen con- 
trasts of color in the evergreen foliage of the tropical 
trees and vegetable plants. The red river of the Urique, 
after emerging from the great canyon, flows gently and 
placidly through the peaceful village. The river is not 
truly a deep, clay red — not the red of shale and earth 
mixed — but the red of peroxide of iron and copper, the 
sang-du-boeuf of Oriental ceramics. Eushing over ir- 
regular beds of gravel and boulders and by rock-ri>sbed 
walls, it cuts and carries with it through hundreds of 
miles red sands of shale, granite and porphyry, red rust- 
ings of iron and grits of garnet and carnelian agate. 

The evening of the next day after entering the quaint 
and picturesque town, I stood on a ledge overlooking 
the narrow valley and again saw the long, snake-like 
shadows of the Suaharos creeping slowly up the side of 
the opposite mountain. The air was preternaturally still 
and was filled with the reflected glory of the departing 
sun. The sky to the east was like a lake of blood, and 
under it the ancient mountains were colored in deep pur- 
ple and violet. The sun was an enormous ball of fire 
floating in the descending heavens and above it were 
banks of clouds through which flashes of bloody light 
came and at times hung to their fringes. Just before 
the sun plunged behind its own horizon its light pene- 
trated the motionless clouds in spires, and when the sun 
dipped and was lost, the spires of glory quivered in the 
heavens and waves of red and amber light rolled over 
the atmospheric sea. Sharply outlined to my right was 
the mountain rising above the Urique like a crouching 
lion and holding in its outstretched and open paw the 
unknown and attractive little village. 

It is only nine of the night, but all lights are out and 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 43 

the village sleeps. My window is open, I can hear the 
flow of the Urique, and as I listen to its gurgling waters 
a cock crows across the river. The crow of the cock 
changes my thoughts which carry me back three years, 
and bear me to a room of the ''seaside cottage" in the 
negro town of Plymouth, Montserrat,West India Islands. 
Unable to sleep I am seated at my open window looking 
out upon the tragic waters of the Caribbean sea. The 
moon swings three-quarters full in a cloudless sky, the 
air I breathe brings to me a suspicion of sulphur es- 
caping from the open vents of La Soufriere, the vol- 
canic mount rising to the west and dangerously near the 
negro village. I can hear the wash of the waves combing 
the beach and see the ''Jumbo lights" in the windows of 
the negro cabins to remind the ghosts of the dead and 
the demons of the night that friends are sleeping there. 
It is 2 o'clock in the morning, a sepulchral quiet possesses 
the uncanny place, when — the cock crows. Then from 
out a large hut, down the shore street, there comes a 
negro well on in years, followed by a young negress, two 
women and three men. They do not speak, nor shake 
hands, they exchange no civilities, they separate and dis- 
appear. Who were they? Snake worshipers. Great 
Britain owns the island and British law prohibits, under 
penalty, the adoration of the serpent. Stronger than 
the law of Great Britain is the law of African supersti- 
tion and the fear of the demon that dwells in the white 
snake, so reverently guarded and fed b}^ the family who 
live in the hut. Again the cock crows. Where am I? 
Oh, in Urique. There is no noticeable difference in the 
crow of the cock the world over. This friendly bird 
from over the Urique river warns me it is getting late. 
I must to bed, so, "Good night to Marmion." 



CHAPTEE VI. 



THE RUNISTERS OF THE SIERRA. 



If there be any state in the Republic of Mexico about 
which it is difficult to obtain accurate or exact statistics, 
it is Sonora. Populated largely by Indians and miners, 
scattered over the whole state and immune to the salu- 
tary influence of law, it is difficult to take its census or 
bring its population under the restraining checks of civ- 
ilization. Hermosillo, with its 25,000 people, is numeri- 
cally and commercially the most important town in So- 
nora. It is 110 miles north of Guaymas. The harbor of 
Guaymas is one of the best on the Pacific coast, it is 
four miles long, with an inner and outer bay, and will 
admit ships of the heaviest tonnage, and could, I think, 
float the commerce of America. The Yaqui river, of 
which I will have occasion to write at another time, en- 
ters the Gulf of California, called the Gulf of Cortez by 
the Mexicans — eighteen miles below Guaymas. The So- 
nora flows through the Arizipa valley, which is known as 
the Garden of Sonora on account of its incomparable fer- 
tiUty. Formerly it was dominated by the terrible Ya- 
quis, and a few years ago the depopulated villages and 
ranches were melancholy reminders of the ruthless ven- 
geance of these ferocious men. 

The Sonora river valley, with its wealth of rich allu- 
vial land, its facilities for irrigation and adaptation to 
semi-tropical and temperate fruits and cereals, will 
eventually support a great population. 

That the valley and adjacent lands were in ancient 
days occupied by a numerous and barbaric — not savage — 



46 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

race, there can be no doubt. Scattered over the face of 
the country are the remains of a people who have long 
ago disappeared. Many of the ruins are of great extent, 
covering whole table lands, and are crumbling away in 
groups or in single isolation. Unfortunately, no docu- 
ments are known to exist to record the traditions of the 
ancient people before the Spanish missionary fathers 
first began the civilization of the tribes 400 years ago. 
'When the early Jesuit missionaries were called home, the 
archives and everything belonging to the missions were 
carried away or destroyed. It is, however, possible that 
a search through the libraries of the Jesuit and Francis- 
can monasteries in France and Spain may yet reward 
the historian with some valuable finds. 

From an examination of the sites and the ruins, scat- 
tered here and there in the Sonora valley, I am satisfied 
that the ancient dwellers were a sedentary and agricul- 
tural people ; that they were of the same race as the I'.ioki 
and suffered the same fate as that picturesque tribe, and 
from the unsparing hand of the same merciless destroy- 
ers, the Apache- Yaquis. Long before the time of Cortez 
the evil fame of the unconquerable Yaquis had settled 
around the throne of the Montezumas. There is a tra- 
dition that after the Spanish chief had stormed the City 
of Mexico and made a prisoner of the Aztec ruler, Mon- 
tezuma said to him: ''You may take possession of all 
my empire and subdue all its tribes— but, the Yaqui, 
never." To-day the Sonora valley is wet with the blood 
of slaughtered settlers. Formerly these fierce men con- 
fined their depredations to the Sonora valley and the ' 
Yaqui river regions, but the members of the tribe are 
now scattered over northern and central Sonora, the 
fighters, however, live in the Bacatete mountains and 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 47 

parts of the Sierras. One-half of them are partially civ- 
ilized and are peaceable, the other half continue to wage 
a guerrilla war in the mountainous regions. These moun- 
taineers are men of toughened fibre, of great endurance 
and inured to the extremes of heat, cold, and hunger. 
They have no fear of anything or anybody, except the 
spirits of evil, which bring disease and calamities upon 
them, and the "shamans," or medicine men, who act 
as infernal mediators between these demons and their 
victims. 

Their wild, isolated and independent life has given to 
the Yaquis all those characteristic traits of perfect self- 
reliance, of boldness and impatience of restraint which 
distinguish them from the Mayos and other sedentary 
tribes of northern Mexico. Born in the mountains, they 
are familiar with the woods and trails. No coyote of the 
rocks knows his prowling grounds better than a Yaqui 
the secrets of the Sierra wilderness. Like the eagle, he 
sweeps down upon his prey from his aerie amid the 
clouds, and, like the eagle, disappears. 

His dorsal and leg muscles are withes of steel, and 
with his dog — half coyote, half Spanish hound — he'll 
wear down a mountain deer. With the possible excep- 
tion of his neighbor and kinsman, the Tarahumari of the 
Chihuahua woods, he is, perhaps, the greatest long dis- 
tance runner in America. 

Occasionally, friendly contests take place between the 
noted athletes of the two tribes. Six years ago a Tara- 
humari champion challenged one of the greatest long- 
distance runners of the Yaquis. In a former contest the 
Yaqui runner won out. He covered 100 Spanish miles, 
equal to 90 of ours, over hilly and broken ground, in 
eleven hours and twenty minutes. Comparing this per- 



48 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

formance with those of civilized man in ancient and mod- 
ern times, the Yaqui, all things considered, wins the lau- 
rel crown. Plin}^ records that Anystrs, of Sparta, and 
Philonedes, the herald of Alexander the Great, divid- 
ing the distance between them, covered IGO miles in 
twenty-four hours. Herodotus tells us that Phieddip- 
pides, the pan-Hellenic champion, traversed 135 miles 
over very rocky territory, and in gruelling weather, in 
less than two days, carried to Sparta the news of the 
advancing Persians. Pie almost attained an apotheosis 
in reward for his endurance, showing that, even among 
the athletic Greeks the feat was deemed an extraordi- 
nary performance. History .also credits Areus with win- 
ning the Dolichos, of two and a half miles, in a fraction 
less than twelve minutes, at the Olympic games, and 
straightway starting on a homeward run of sixty miles, 
to be the first to bear the joyous news to his native vil- 
lage. In recent times, Rowell, of England, in 1882, trav- 
eled 150 miles in twenty-two hours and thirty minutes, 
and Fitzgerald, in Madison Square Garden, went, in 
1886, on a quarter-mile circular track, ninety miles in 
twelve hours. Longboat, the Oneida Indian from the 
Brantford reservation, Canada, won the Boston Mara- 
thon, twenty-six miles, in two hours and twenty-four 
minutes. These modern feats, however, were per- 
formed over carefully prepared courses and ought not 
to take rank with the rough mountain and desert races 
of the Yaquis and Tarahumaris. 

The race of six years ago was run over the same 
course as the former, and was the same distance, that is, 
ninety miles. Piles of blankets, bridles and saddles, 
bunches of cows, sheep, goats and burros were bet on 
the result, and, when the race was over, the Yaqui braves 




-Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York. 

TARAHUMARI INDIANS, NORTHERN MEXICO 



BY PATH AND TKAIL. 49 

were bankrupt. The night before the event the Indians 
camped near the starting line, and when the sun went 
down opened the betting. An hour before the start, the 
course was lined on each side with men two miles apart. 
Precisely at 4 in the morning the racers, wearing bull- 
hide sandals and breech-clouts, or, to be more accurate, 
the G string, toed the mark and were sent away, encour- 
aged by the most extraordinary series of hi-yi-yiis, yells, 
shrieks and guttural shouts ever heard by civilized man. 
The path carried them over rough ground, along the 
verge of deep precipices, over arroyos or old river beds, 
across arid sands. Every two miles the runners stopped 
for a quick rub down and mouth wash of pinola or atole, 
a corn meal gruel. Then with a ''win for the Yaquis" or 
''the Humari women already welcome you," whispered 
in his ear, the runner bounds into the wilderness. Three 
o'clock that afternoon the men were sighted from the 
finish line running shin to shin, and at 3 :15 the Tarahu- 
mari crossed the mark amid a chorus of triumphal yelps, 
retrieving the honors lost in the former contest and mak- 
ing his backers "heap ri(?h." The ninety miles were 
run by both men in eleven hours and fifteen minutes, and 
considering the nature of the ground, it is doubtful if 
any of our- great athletes could cover the distance in the 
same time. 

In addition to his fleetness of foot and staying powers, 
the Yaqui is a man of infinite resources. Years of thirst, 
starvation and exposure have produced a human type 
with the qualities and developed instinct of the coyote 
of the desert. He is the descendant of many gener- 
ations of warriors, and is heir to all the acquired infor- 
mation of centuries of experience, of bush, desert, and 
mountain fighting. There is not a trick of strategy, not 



50 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

a bit of savage tactics in war, not a particle of knowledge 
bearing upon attack, engagement and escape, with which 
he is not familiar, for he has been taught them all from 
infancy, and has practiced them from boyhood. He is 
the last of the Indian fighters, and, perhaps, the greatest. 
The world will never again see a man like him, for the 
conditions will never again make for his reproduction. 
With him will disappear the perfection of savage cun- 
ning in war and on the hunt, and when he departs, an 
unlamented man, but withal a picturesque character, will 
disappear from the drama of human life, will go down 
into darkness, but not into oblivion. 

What, then, is the cause of the murderous and pro- 
longed hostility of the Yaquis to Mexican rule? Why is 
the exterminating feud allowed to perpetuate itself, and 
why are not these Indians subdued? Must Sonora be 
forever terrorized by a handful of half-savage mountain- 
eers, and must the march of civilization in Sonora be ar- 
rested by a tribe of Indians? 

To get an answer to these questions I asked, and ob- 
tained an interview with General Lorenzo E. Torres, 
commander-in-chief of the First Military Zone of Mex- 
ico. With my request I inclosed my credentials accredit- 
ing me as a person of some importance in his own coun- 
try and a writer of some distinction. 

Although the general's time was filled with important 
military affairs and another engagement awaited him, he 
received me with that courtesy and politeness which 
seem to be an inheritance of the educated members of 
the Latin race the world over. Though a man of full 
60 years, the general appears to retain all the animation 
and vitality of the days when, by his impetuosity and 
dauntless courage, he won his brevet at Oajaca, and the 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 51 

tassels of a colonel on the field of Mien. To the physical 
buoyancy and elasticity of younger days were now wed- 
ded the conscious dignity of high reward and the no- 
bility of facial expression which waits on honorable age. 
After an exchange of introductory courtesies, I made 
known at once the purport of my visit. 

''General, would you kindly give me some informa- 
tion about the Yaquis? In my country we have heard 
the evidence of one side only, and that was not always 
favorable to the Mexican government. We would be 
pleased to Imow the truth, so as to be able to form a 
just and impartial judgment." The general very oblig- 
ingly proceeded to satisfy my request. 

"The feud with the Yaquis," he smilingly replied, 
''goes back many years. The trouble began in the days 
of the conquest of Mexico. In 1539, when the Spaniards 
first crossed the Mayo river, and penetrated the lands of 
the Yaquis, they found them entrenched on the banks 
of the Yaqui river, awaiting the advance of the Euro- 
peans, and ready for battle. Their chief, robed in the 
skin of a spotted tiger, profusely decorated with colored 
shells and the feathers of the trogon, stepped to the front 
of his warriors, drew a line upon the ground and defied 
the Spaniards to cross it. The Spanish captain protest- 
ed that he and his men came as friends ; they were simply 
exploring the country, and all they asked for or wanted 
was food for themselves and horses. 

" 'We will first bind your men and then we will feed 
your horses,' was the answer of the Yaqui chieftain. 
While he was yet speaking he unwound a cougar lariat, 
and advanced as if he intended to rope the Castilian of- 
ficer. This was the signal for a hot engagement, which 
ended in the retreat of the Spaniards. Later, in 1584, 



52 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

Don Hartinez de Hurdiade tried to conquer them, and 
was defeated in three separate campaigns. However, 
strange to relate, in 1610, the Yaquis, of their own ac- 
cord, submitted to the Crown of Spain. ' ' 

''Are they braver and better fighters, general, than 
the other tribes now at peace with the republic?" ''I 
think they are," replied Don Lorenzo. "Mountaineers 
are everywhere stubborn fighters. At any rate, for the 
past fifty years they have given us more trouble than 
all the Indians in Mexico and Yucatan. Don Diego Mar- 
tinez, in his report, made mention of the indomitable 
bravery and cunning strategy of the Yaquis of his time. 
In his 'Relacion,' or report of his expedition, he said that 
no Indian tribe had caused him so much trouble as the 
Yaqui. After their submission, in 1610, they stayed 
quiet until 1740, when they again broke out. The rebel- 
lion was quenched in blood, and for eighty-five years 
they remained peaceful. Then began a period of inter- 
mittent raids. The years 1825, 1826 and 1832 were years 
of blood, but the Yaquis were, at last, subdued and their 
war chiefs, Banderas and Guiteieres, executed. In 1867 
they again revolted, and were again defeated, but de- 
spite all their defeats, they were not yet conquered. 

''They led a semi-savage life in the Yaqui valley, but 
were always giving us trouble, raiding here and there. 
The majority of them would seemingly be at peace, but 
human life was always more or less in danger in and 
near the Yaqui district. 

"Isolated bands of them lived by plunder, raiding, 
foraging and murdering on the rancherias and hacien- 
das. This condition of things was, to say the least, ex- 
tremely irritating. No self respecting government can 
tolerate within its borders gangs of ruffians defying civ- 



BY PATH AND TKAIL. 53 

ilization, law and order. The federal government de- 
cided to act." 

''Were you then the general in command, Don Lo- 
renzo ? ' ' 

"No, I was governor of Sonora; it was later, in 1892, 
that I was given command of this zone. When war 
again broke ont between the tribe and the federal troops, 
the Yaquis were very daring, and numerically strong; 
some hot engagements took place, and the Yaquis fled to 
the Bacatete mountains. From these hills they swooped 
down upon the mines, held up the trails and mail routes, 
and terrorized the surrounding country. Our troops 
pursued them into the mountains, storming their im- 
pregnable strongholds. It took ten years of tedious and 
bloody fighting to reduce them and bring them to terms. 
We struck a peace, and to that treaty of peace the Mexi- 
can government was true, and stood by its terms and 
pledges. We gave the Yaquis twenty times more land 
than they ever dreamed of cultivating. We gave them 
cattle, tools and money. We fed them and furnished 
them seed. We have been humane to a degree unde- 
served by the Yaquis." 

The general rose from his seat, and, for a few mo- 
ments, paced the room as if in deep thought. Whether 
he suspected my sympathies were with the Indians or 
that his government was wedged in between the base in- 
gratitude of the Yaquis and the censure of the outside 
world, I do n^t know, but he interrupted his walk, faced 
me with a noticeable shade of irritation on his fine face, 
and continued : 

''I did even more; as religion has a soothing and paci- 
fying effect upon the soul and the passions, I obtained 
priests and Sisters of Charity for them; I established 



54 BY PATH AND TBAIL. 

schools among them. But you can't tame the wolf. Not- 
withstanding all our kindness and friendly efforts on 
their behalf, the tribe revolted again two years later. 
With the money we gave them, and the mission funds, 
which they took from the priests, they purchased rifles 
and ammunition from American adventurers and Mexi- 
can renegades, and made for the mountains. In their 
flight for the hills they carried with them one of the 
mission priests and four of the Sisters of Charity, hold- 
ing them captives for six months. This happened on 
July 31, 1897." 

''Pardon me, general," I interposed, "but the most 
of us who are interested in the Mexican tribes, believe 
the Yaquis to be Christian." 

"They have a varnish of Christianity, it is true, but 
this religious wash only helps to conceal a deep sub- 
stratum of paganism; at heart they are heathens and 
hold to their old superstitions and pagan practices." 

"So that, since 1897 — that is to say, for ten years — 
the Mexican government has been at war with tJie 
Yaquis I" 

"That is not the right word. The Yaquis do not 
fight in the open, so that no real battles are fought. In 
detached commands we have to follow them into the 
mountains, and, as they know every rock and tree of the 
Bacatetes, we are pursuing ghosts." 

"How many Yaquis are there, Don Lorenzo?" 

"There are now some 4,000 left in Sonora. The ma- 
jority of these are peaceful, but sympathize with the 
outlaws and assist them in many ways. They all speak 
Spanish, dress like poor Mexicans, and as the neutral 
Yaquis aid and give shelter to the fighters, we must re- 
gard them all as enemies of the republic. ' ' 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 55 

''So, then, there is no solution to the Yaqui prob- 
lem?" 

"Oh, yes, there is. We are sending them to Yucatan, 
Tabasco and Chiapas, with their families. There they 
work in the henequin or hemp fields and make a good 
living. Already we have transported 2,000, and unless 
the other 4,000 now here behave themselves, we will ship 
them to Yucatan also. The state of Sonora is as large 
as England, and cannot be covered by military troops 
and patrols without great expense. The Yaqui problem, 
as you are pleased to call it, will be solved in due time, 
and Sonora, when fully developed, will amaze the world 
with its riohes and resources." 

This expression of hope and faith brought my visit 
to a close. I shook hands with the general and took my 
leave of a distinguished soldier and a most courteous 
gentleman. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE PRIEST AND THE YAQUIS. 

The war between the Mexican government and the 
Yaquis is not conducted according to methods or prac- 
tices which govern civilized nations. It partakes more 
of the nature of a Corsican vendetta or a Kentucky feud. 
It is a war of ''shoot on sight" by the Mexicans, and of 
treachery, cunning, ambushment and midnight slaughter 
by the Yaquis. It is a war of extermination. 

In 1861 Governor Pesquira, of Sonora, in a proclama- 
tion offering $100 for every Yaqui scalp brought in, calls 
them ''human wolves," "incarnate demons," who de- 
serve to be "skinned alive." 

"There is only one way," writes Signer Camillo Diaz, 
"to wage war against the Yaquis. We must enter upon 
a steady, persistent campaign, following them to their 
haunts, hunting them to the fastness of their mount- 
ains. They must be surrounded, starved, surprised or 
inveigled by white flags, or by any methods human or dia- 
bolic, and then — then put them to death. A man might 
as well have sympathy for a rattlesnake or a tiger. ' ' 

And now let me end this rather long dissertation on 
this singular tribe by a citation from Velasco, the his- 
torian of Sonora. I ought, however, to add that the 
Yaqui has yet to be heard in his defense. "Without doubt," 
writes Velasco, "it must be admitted that under no good 
treatment does the Yaqui abandon his barbarism, his 
perfidy, his atrocity. Notwithstanding his many treaties 
of peace with Mexico and the memory of what he suf- 
fered in past campaigns, yet on the first opportunity and 



58 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

on the slightest provocation he breaks faith and becomes 
worse than before." 

When I returned to Guaymas from Torin I learned 
that a desperate engagement between the Mexican troops 
and the Yaqui Indians, in the mountains southeast of 
this city, had taken place. I have already mentioned a 
raid made by the Yaquis on the railroad station of Len- 
cho, Sonora, in which the station master was killed, four 
men seriously wounded and three girls swept to the 
mountains. Since then the Mexicans have been on the 
trail of the Yaquis ; now and then exchanging shots, with 
an occasional skirmish, but not until the day before yes- 
terday did the enemy and the Mexican troops come to 
close quarters. One cannot place much confidence in the 
wild reports now circulated on the streets of Guaymas. 
A Mayo runner, who came in with dispatches this morn- 
ing, is reported to have said that the Mexicans lost 
twenty men in the battle, and that many of the womided 
were lying on the field, still uncared for, when he left. 
He says the Yaquis were defeated, but as they carried 
away their dead and wounded when they retreated, it 
was not known how many Yaquis were killed. Owing to 
the inaccessible nature of the country and its remoteness 
from here, we do not expect further particulars until 
to-morrow. If the Yaquis had time to carry off their 
dead and wounded, depend upon it, the Mexican troops 
gained no victory. I had a talk this afternoon with a 
governmental official, who had no more information than 
myself, about the engagement. He declared in the course 
of our conversation that it was the purpose of the na- 
tional government and of the state of Sonora to exter- 
minate the Yaquis, and that the troops would remain 
in the mountains till the last of the Yaquis was bayoneted 



BY PATH AND TliAiL. 59 

or shot, 'When I ventured the remark that the authori- 
ties of Mexico said the same thing forty years ago, have 
been repeating it at measured intervals ever since, and 
that the Yaquis seem to be as far from annihilation as 
they were in Spanish times, he became restless, rose from 
his seat and his color heightened. I thought he was go- 
ing to vomit. I steadied him by ordering up the cigars 
and a bottle of tequila. He then informed me in a confi- 
dential whisper that ''the Yaquis were, indeed, terrible 
fighters, but now it would soon be all up with them. 
Signor Pedro Alvarado, the owner of the greatest silver 
mine in Mexico and the wealthiest man in the republic, 
had offered to raise and keep in the field at his own ex- 
pense, a regiment of Mexican 'Rurales' for the exter- 
mination of the Yaquis." 

On my way from Torin to Guaymas I called to pay 
my respects to the priest in charge of one of the inland 
villages where I was compelled to pass a night. After 
a very courteous reception and some preliminary talk, 
I expressed a wish to have his views on the misunder- 
standing between the Mexican government and the Yaqui 
Indians. I adverted to my interview with General L. E. 
Torres, and outlined the substance of our conversation. 

"Well," he began, "if an impartial tribunal, like The 
Hague convention, could examine the dead and living 
witnesses of both sides, and after sifting and weighing 
the result of the evidence, the scales of justice might pos- 
sibly turn in favor of the Indians. It matters little now 
with whom the fault rests. The Yaquis cannot get a 
hearing, and if they could what would it avail them? 
It's a case of the 'race to the swift, the battle to the 
strong, and the weak to the wall.' When the American 
troops were carrying extermination to the Apaches in 



60 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

Arizona, the Indians were represented in tlie Eastern 
states and Middle West as demons escaped from hell 
and incarnated in Apache bodies. It was madness to 
offer an apology for the Indians or to hint at the provo- 
cation and treatment goading them to desperation. The 
public voice had spoken, the case was closed — Roma 
locuta est, causafinita est." 

"I am a Mexican, and by force of birth and family 
ties, am with my own people, but as a priest of God, I 
ought not to tread upon the bruised reed or quench the 
smoking flax." 

'^Are the Yaquis Catholics, padre miol" I asked. 

*' Fully one-half of the Yaquis are as devout Catholics 
as any people of Mexico. The mountaineers, whose an- 
cestors were converted to the faith, are outlaws for 200 
years and retain, as a tradition, many Catholic ceremon- 
ies wedded to old pagan superstitions and practices. 
The fact, that when in 1898 they fled to the mountains 
and carried with them in their flight the parish priest and 
four nuns, and did them no harm, is a convincing proof 
that they still retain a reverence for the priesthood and 
for holy women." 

''Then at one time the whole tribe was converted to 
the Catholic faith?" 

"Yes, and if the greed and covetousness of politicians 
and adventurers had not foully wronged them, the mem- 
bers of the Yaqui tribe would to-day be among the best 
and most loyal citizens of the Mexican republic. 

"As early as 1539 Father Marcos of Nizza visited 
the Yaquis in the Sonora valley. Ten years after Nizza 's 
\isit two Jesuit missionaries took up their abode among 
them. Other missionaries followed until, at the time of 
Otondo's expedition in 1683 to Lower California, nearly 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 61 

all the tribes of Souora and Ciiihuahiia, including the 
Yaquis, were Christianized. 

"They were among the first to be converted by the 
Jesuits. Originally extremely warlike, on being con- 
verted to Christianity, their savage nature was com- 
pletely subdued and they became the most docile and 
tractable of people. They are invariably honest, faith- 
ful and industrious. They are also the fishermen and 
famous pearl-divers of the Gulf of California. 

''After the Yaquis became Christians they continued 
to hold to their tribal unity, while many of the other 
tribes were merged in the older Indian population, 
known as 'Indios Mansos.' They yet retain their tribal 
laws and clanship, and it is their loyalty to these laws 
that has led to much of the trouble between them and our 
government. ' ' 

'•Does the Republic of Mexico recognize their status 
as an independent body or an imperium in imperioV^ I 
asked. 

"You have touched the crux of the whole question," 
he replied. "The Mexican government has made many 
treaties with the Yaquis, thus acknowledging in a meas- 
ure their separate political entity, if not independence. 
But, when a Yaqui violates a Mexican law, the Republic 
demands his surrender that he may be tried and pun- 
ished by its own courts, while on the other hand, if a 
Mexican commits an outrage on a Yaqui, our govern- 
ment will not admit the right of the Yaquis to try him 
and punish him." 

"But will your government punish him!" 

"If it catches him, and his crime be proved, yes ; that 
is if he be a nobody, but if he has money or influential 



62 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

friends, he's never caught, or if caught, is rarely con- 
victed. 

:'The Indian does not understand this way of doing 
things, and he takes the law into his own hands, and then 
the trouble begins." 

''What was the opinion of the early missionary fathers 
touching the Yaquis ? ' ' 

''Among all the wild tribes evangelized and civilized 
by the Spanish priests, among the Sinoloans, Chihuhu- 
ans, Tarahumaria, Mayos and others, the Yaquis held 
first place, and were rated high for their morality and 
attachment to the faith. 

"The famous Father Salvatierra, who spent ten years 
on the Yaqui mission; Fathers Eusebio Kino, Taravel 
nnd others, have left on record their commendations of 
the fidelity of the Yaquis and the cleanliness of their 
moral lives." 

' ' It was a Yaqui chief who accompanied Father Ugarte 
vrhen he mapped and explored Lower California. When 
the mission of Father Taravel of Santiago, Lower Cali- 
fornia, was threatened by the savage Perucci, the Yaquis 
sent sixt}^ of their warriors to the defense of the priest 
and his converts. They offered 500 fighting men to pro- 
tect the missions of Bija, California, provided they were 
called upon and transportation across the gulf fur- 
nished them. In those days they were famed for their 
fidelity to the Spaniards, in fact all the early writers 
speak kindly of them, and they were then known as the 
'most faithful Yaqui nation.' 

"When the missions were dissolved by the Mexican 
government, and the fathers compelled to abandon their 
posts, the Yaquis and the Mexicans quarreled. In 1825 
they revolted, claiming they were burdened with heavy 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 63 

taxes. Banderas, the Yaqui chief, led the uprising and 
won material concessions from our government. Ban- 
deras headed another rebellion in 1832, in which he was 
defeated and slain. The next uprising was in 1884-7, 
caused by encroachments on the lands of the tribe, and 
the present war is due to the lawless acts of the gold 
hunters and their contempt for the laws of the Yaqui 
tribe. They have the misfortune to live on the fringe 
of civilization, where provocation is always menacing. ' ' 

' ' K I am not trespassing too generously on your cour- 
tesy, may I ask why the Franciscan fathers abandoned 
the missions in Sonora?" 

''They did not abandon the missions," replied the 
priest, 'Hhey were exiled — I do not like to use the word, 
expelled — from all Mexican territory after the declara- 
tion and separation of the republic from Spain. You 
see, party spirit, or rather, racial divergence, was very 
acute and rancorous in those times. When the Mexi- 
cans achieved their independence, all Spaniards, includ- 
ing priests, officials and professional men, were ordered 
to leave the country. There were hardly enough native 
priests to administer the canonically established par- 
ishes, and for twenty-five years the Indians of Sonora 
were without the consoling influence of the Christian 
religion or the pacifying presence of the only men who 
could restrain the expression of their warlike instincts.'* 

''So you are of the opinion that if the missionaries 
had remained with them, the Yaquis would now be at 
peace with Mexico I" 

"I am sure of it. In 1696, when the Jesuit superior 
of the 'Alta Pimeria' missions decided to send Father 
Eusebio Kino from Sonora to open the mission to the 
'Digger Indians' of Lower California, the military gov- 



64 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

ernor refused to let Father Kino go, saying that the 
priest had more power in restraining the Indians of the 
Sonora and Yaqui lands than a regiment of soldiers. ' ' 

My interview with this scholarly and devout priest 
was abruptly brought to a close by the arrival of some 
visitors. With the kindness and affability which dis- 
tinguish all the Mexican ecclesiastics that I have been 
privileged to meet, he insisted upon accompanying me to 
the garden gate, where with uncovered head I shook 
his friendly hand, and after thanking him for his gra- 
cious hospitality, bade him good-bye. On the way to my 
posada, or lodging house, I thought of the honors heaped 
upon the Romans by Macauley, and the admiration of the 
world for men like Horatius, who in defense of their 
country, rush to death, asking: 

''How can men die nobler. 

Than facing fearful odds. 
For the ashes of their fathers 

And the temples of their Gods?" 



BOOK II. 
IN THE LAND OF THE "DIGGER INDIAN" 



CHAPTER VIII. 

WHERE MAN ENTERS AT HIS PERIL. 

Reaching out one thousand miles into the Pacific 
ocean, elongating itself like a monstrous thing alive, 
in futile attempt to separate itself from its parent con- 
tinent, there is a lonely land as unknown to the world 
as the vast barbaric interior of Central Africa or the re- 
pellant coasts of Patagonia. Upon its imhospitable shores 
on the west, the sea in anger resenting its intrusive pres- 
ence, has been waring for untold ages, hurling mountain- 
ous waves of immeasurable strength on its sandy beach 
or against its granite fortifications. At times the waters 
of the Gulf of Cortez, rising in their wrath, rush with 
fierce violence on its western flank, and the sound of 
the impact is the roaring of the sea heard far inland. In 
this war of the elements great wounds have been opened 
where the land was vulnerable, and indentations, inlets 
and deep bays remain to record the desperate nature of 
the unending battles of the primordial forces. This aw- 
ful and vast solitude of riven mountains and parched 
deserts retains the name it received 350 years ago, when 
baptized in the blood of thirteen Spaniards slaughtered 
by the savages of this yet savage wilderness. This is 
Baija, Cal. — Lower California — a wild and dreary re- 
gion, torn by torrents, barrancas and ravines, and in 
places, disfigured by ghastlj^ wounds inflicted by vol- 
canic fire or earthquake. 

The exterior world furnishes nothing to compare with 
it. Here are mountains devoid of vegetation, extraor- 
dinary plateaus, bewildering lines of fragmentary cliifs, 



68 BY PATH AND TEAIL. 

a land where there are no flowing rivers, where no rain 
falls in places for years, volcanoes that geologically died 
but yesterday and whose configurations and weird out- 
lines are impossible of description. Its rugged shores 
are indented and toothed like a crosscut saw. It is a 
land of sorrow almost deserted of man and shrouded in 
an isolation startling in its pitiful silence. Save the un- 
profitable cactus and the sombre sagebrush, friends of 
the desert reptiles, there is no vegetation in regions of 
startling sterility. 

If there be upon the earth a country lying under the 
pall of the Isaiahan malediction, it is here; for here is 
the realization and accomplishment of the dread proph- 
ecy portending the blight of vegetable life. ''I will 
lay it waste, and it shall not be pruned or digged, but 
there shall come up briars and thorns. I will also com- 
mand the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. ' ' 

Here in the vast interior loneliness of this forbidding 
land are horrent deserts where the traveler may ride 
hundreds of miles and find no water or look upon other 
vegetation than thorny cacti or scattered bushes of the 
warning greese-wood, telling him that here is death. The 
lonely mountains bordering these deserts are striking in 
their visible sterility. Torrential rains in seasons over- 
whelm the struggling vegetation that in the intervening 
months of repose invade the few inviting patches, and, 
rushing madly to the foothills, sweep all vegetable life 
before them. 

Then, when the storm retires, and the blazing sun 
burns the very air, the porphyritic rocks become an ashen 
white, and, reflecting the sun's rays, throw off rolling' 
billows of unendurable heat. Most of these repellent 
ranges are granite, but in many places there are found 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 69 

outcroppings of gneiss, mica, talc and clay slates. They 
underlie the quarternary at the base of the granite hills. 
In some sections the levels are overlaid with the detritus 
from these rocks. Toward the Gulf of California the 
slates are accompanied by metamorphic limestones, and 
often appear forming independent ridges or inclining 
toward the high granite hills. Near the Pacific coast 
the land is sown with volcanic cones, broken by benches 
of land termed mesas, dotted with small groups of hills 
known as Uomas and by long faces of rock called escar- 
pas. Immense streams of lava at one time entered the 
deserts and now cover, as with a metallic shroud, many 
of the sandstone mounds. The petrified waves and eddies 
of the river of mineral and other organic matter, called 
magma, zig-zag here and there in the foothills, resem- 
bling streams of ink solidified. Here are rocks, aqueous 
and igneous, rocks splintered and twisted, and showings 
of grit stones, conglomerates, shales, salts and syenite 
basalt. 

Here, too, are streams poisoned with wearings of cop- 
per, with salts, arsenic and borax, and vast beds of sand 
and gypsum covered with an alkaline crust, and dry 
lakes, white as snow, on whose lonely breasts the sand 
lies fine as dust. The weird solitude, the great silence, 
the grim desolation, the waste places and barren deserts 
accursed and forsaken of man, abandoned to the horned 
toad, the tarantula and the snake, terrify the soul and 
raise a barrier to exploration. The only drinking water 
to be found over an area of hundreds of miles is in rock 
depressions and in holes here and there in the mountains 
where the rain has collected in natural tanks hidden from 
solar rays and partially protected from evaporation. 
But there are seasons when, for years, no rain falls, and 



70 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

then in this awesome peninsular furnace, the air is burn- 
ing, the sand hot as volcanic ash, and the silence like 
unto that which was when God said ''Let there be light." 
The deserts of this mysterious land are regions of sand 
where earth and sky form a circle as distinct as that 
traced by a sweep of the compass. 

Into this desolation of sterility and solitude man enters 
at his peril, for here the deadly horned rattlesnake, the 
white scorpion, thirst and sweatless heat invite him to 
his ruin and offer a constant menace to life. K with de- 
termined purpose he dares his fate and attempts the 
crossing of the parched and desolate land, the white 
glare reflected from the treacherous sand threatens him 
with blindness. At times he encounters the deadly sand- 
storms of this awful wilderness of aridity, the driving 
and whirling sands blister his face and carry oppression 
to his breathing. If the water he carries fail him, he 
may find a depression half full of mockery and disap- 
pointment, for its waters hold in solution alkali, alum or 
arsenic, and bear madness or death in their alluring ap- 
pearance. 

If night overtake him and sleep oppress him, he must 
be careful where he takes his rest, lest a storm break 
upon him and bury him under its ever-shifting sands, 
and if he sleeps well he may never awake. And these 
storms are capricious, for, after welcoming the unhappy 
man to a hospitable grave in the desert and covering him 
with a mound many feet high and of liberal circiunfer- 
ence, they are not satisfied to let him rest in peace, for, 
months later, it may be years, they scatter the dune and 
expose the mummified body. There are here no vultures to 
clean the bones, for the vulture is the hyena of the air 
and lives on putrefaction, and there is here no decompos- 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 71 

ing flesh. The carcass of man or beast is dried by solar 
suction, the skin is parched and blackened and tightens 
on the bones ; the teeth show white, for the lips are gone 
with contraction, the eyes are burned out and the sock- 
ets filled with sand, and the hair is matted, dry and sand- 
sprinkled. If the lonely man be so unfortunate as to es- 
cape death by suffocation, he awakes with the dawn. 
Dawn on the desert while the stars still glow in cerulean 
blue. It is a vision of transcendent beauty, for toward 
the east the sky is bathed in a sea of amber, light blue 
and roseate. The stillness is intense, illimitable, it is the 
preternatural. 

The man has lost all appreciation of the beautiful, the 
divine silence has no charms for him, it suggests the 
grave. Twilight expands into day, the instinct of life, 
of self-preservation, dominates him, he rises and answers 
the call of the mountains which allure him by their ap- 
parent nearness. The remorseless sun times his pace 
with his; if he stands still, the sun stands still, if he 
moves forward, the sun moves forward; if he runs, the 
sun pursues, and to the lost man staggering in the desert 
it is as if the air was afire and his brain ablaze. The 
pallor of mental anguish and physical pain are ashening 
his skin ; his eyes are wild and shot with blood ; his fea- 
tures are drawn and his face is neighbor to death. And 
now he searches for his knife and cuts away his boots, 
for his feet are swollen shockingly, his hair is beginning 
to bleach, his gait is shambling, and the strong man of 
yesterday is aging rapidly. Reason, for some time, has 
been bidding him good-bye, and is now leaving him, — it 
is gone forever, and only the primal instinct of self-pres- 
ervation remains with him in his horrible isolation from 
human aid. In this lonely wilderness the cruel sun pours 



72 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

down his intolerable rays till the very air vibrates with 
waves of heat. Nothing moves, nothing agitates the awe- 
some silence, there is no motion in the heavens, in the 
dumb, dead air, on the burning sand. The madman tries 
to shout, but his throat can only return a hoarse guttural, 
and his blackened tongue hangs out as he gasps for 
breath. Hunger is gnawing him, thirst is devouring him, 
and he does not know it. The cells of his brain are filled 
with fire, his body is burning ; piece by piece he has torn 
away his clothes, and now, from throat to waist, he rips 
open his flannel shirt and flings it from him. His sight 
has left him, his paralyzed limbs can no longer support 
his fleshless body, and blind, naked, demented, he falls 
upon the desert and is dead. Who was he! A pros- 
pector. Where was he going I To the mountains. For 
what? For gold. He follows is as did the wise men the 
star of Bethlehem. It lures the feet of men and often 
woos the rash and the brave to death and madness. 

When the prospector has achieved the conquest of the 
desert and reached the mountains, retaining his health 
and strength, he has accomplished much, but there yet 
remain many trials and hardships to test the courage 
and endurance of the brave man. Not the least of these 
is the wear and tear on the mind of unbroken silence and 
absence of all life. There is nothing that shatters cour- 
age, chills the heart and paralyzes the nerves as surely 
as some inexplicable sound, either intermittent or persis- 
tent. The brain that conceived the "wandering voice" 
struck the kejmote of terror, and when Milton described 
the armless hand of gloomy vengeance, pursuing its vic- 
tim through lonely places and striking when the terrified 
man thought himself within the security of darkness, he 
gave us one of the most awful examples of the fears of 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 73 

a guilty soul overcome with helplessness and shook with 
nameless horror. 

There are those now living in this forbidding peninsu- 
la who have dared and conquered the burning heat and 
trackless sands of lonely wastes, only to encounter, when 
they reached their goal of hope in the mountains, spec- 
tres of the imagination and the wraiths of disordered 
senses. Of these was Antonio Gallego, a physical wreck, 
who was pointed out to me shuffling across the plazuela 
in the town of San Rafael. 

He was a fine, manly fellow in his day, earning a fair 
wage in the Rothschild smelter, when he took the mine 
fever and started for the mountains on a prospecting ex- 
pedition. He was all alone, carrying his pick and shovel, 
water and food. A good deal of desultory wandering 
took him finally into a little canyon where he found a 
promising ' ' outcropping, ' ' and he went to work to locate 
a claim. It was a desolate place, but beautiful in a way. 
On either side of the valley that formed the bosom of the 
canyon, the mountain sloped up and up, until the purple 
tops merged into the blue sky, while on the rock and 
granite-strewn acclivity no vegetation took root. 

No game existed there; the very birds never flew 
across the place, and it was so sheltered from currents 
of air that even the winds had no voice. This dreadful 
and unnatural stillness was the first thing that impressed 
itself upon Gallego. Particularly at night time, when the 
stars glittering and scintillating as they always seem in 
these solitudes, jeweled the sky, he would sit at the open 
door of his hut, and the silence would be so vast and pro- 
found that the beating of his own heart would drum in 
his ear like the strokes of a trip-hammer. He was not a 
man of weird imagination, but unconsciously and grad- 



74 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

Tially au awe of the immense solitude possessed him. 
And little by little, as he afterward told the story, 
another feeling stole in upon him. The rock-ribbed gorge 
began to assume a certain familiarity, as though he had 
seen the place in other days and only partially remem- 
bered it, and he ^ould not shake off a subtle impression 
that he was about to hear or see something that would 
make this recollection vivid. 

There was no human being within a hundred miles, 
and often he was on the point of abandoning the claim 
and retracing his steps. But before he could make up 
his mind he struck an extraordinary formation. It was 
a sort of decomposed quartz, flaked and flecked with gold 
in grains as large as pin heads, and ragged threads that 
looked as if they had at one time been melted and run 
through the rock. Antonio knew enough to be satisfied 
that it would not take much of the "stuff" to make him 
rich, and he worked with feverish haste, uncovering the 
ledge. On the second day after his discovery, he was at 
the bottom of his shallow shaft, when suddenly he paused 
and listened to what he thought was the sound of a 
church bell. He rested on his shovel, the bell was ring- 
ing and the sound was pleasant to his ears. It reminded 
him of home, of the Sunday mass, and the fond, familiar 
church, but above all, it brought back to him the faces of 
the old companions and acquaintances he met in the 
church square Sunday after Sunday, and the veiled and 
sinewy forms and faces of the senoritas crossing the 
plaza to hear mass. How- long he had been dreamily 
listening to the church bell he did not know, but suddenly 
the thought came to him that there could be no church 
nearer than a hundred miles. Still he could hear the bell 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 75 

distinctly, faint and as if afar, yet perfectly clear. It 
sounded, too, like his parish bell. 

Antonio sprang out of his shaft and stood listening. 
The sound confused him and he could not tell exactly 
from what direction it came. It seemed now north, now 
south, and now somewhere above him, but it continued to 
ring, reminding him it was time for mass. Then the bell 
ceased to ring; ah! thought the lone man, ''the priest is 
at the altar and mass has begun. ' ' 

The excitement of the mine had passed away from him 
as fever from a sick man. A sort of inertia crept over 
him and he dropped his shovel and idled for the rest of 
the day, thinking about the bell. As yet he was not 
afraid, but, that night, seated before his lonely cabin, he 
heard the slow, rhythmic sound of the bell once again; 
he felt an icy creeping in his scalp and turned sick with 
dread. He was afraid of the awful solitude and afraid 
to be alone with the mysterious sound. He knew it could 
be no bell, knew that it must be an hallucination, yet be- 
fore it stopped, he went nearly mad. 

The next time he heard it was in the afternoon of the 
following day. He stared about him and the old sense 
of familiarity returned ten-fold. The granite gorge 
seemed teeming with some horrible secret or a spectre 
was soon to appear and speak to him. He feared to look 
around him lest the awful thing would draw near. And 
now the bell begins to toll for the dead, and Antonio 
hears a voice from the air saying, "She is dead, she is 
dead. " " Ah, Cara Mia, ' ' spoke the lone man, ' ' my heart 
is dead within me, but I must go to your funeral and see 
you laid to rest, and I'll soon be with you. ' ' Still the bell 
kept tolling. Before it ceased, Antonio was flying out of 
the canyon, haggard, muttering to himself, wildly ges- 



76 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

ticnlating, and tears flowing down his cheeks. He made 
his way to San Rafael, starting np at night to hurry on, 
and pushing over the almost impenetrable country at 
such a speed that when he reached his destination he was 
iDroken down, a wreck and half demented. 

At times the awful solitude, the immeasurable stillness 
and isolation from human homes close in upon the lonely 
prospector and wear down the texture of the brain. So 
stealthily does the enemy of sanity creep in upon the do- 
minion of the mind, that the doomed man is not con- 
scious, or only dreamly conscious, of its approach. In 
the beginning he notices that he is talking aloud to him- 
self, then, after a time, he talks as if some one is listen- 
ing to him, and presently his questions are answered by, 
presumedly, a living voice. Then, at his meals, going and 
coming from liis cabin, when he is burrowing into the 
side of a prospect, he hears a lone voice or many voices 
in conversation or in angry altercation. It is no use try- 
ing to persuade himself that his imagination is imposing 
on his sense of hearing, the voices are too real and audi- 
ble for that. Presently, lonely apparitions float in the 
air, mist-like and misshapen at first ; then, as they ap- 
proach nearer, they assume human forms, descend 
to the earth and begin to talk and gesticulate. Then 
sometimes the wraith of a dead companion appears to 
him, walks with him to his rude hut a mile away, talks 
over old times, sits with him at his meals and sleeps with 
him. Nor, when wind-tanned and sun-scorched, he re- 
turns to his friends, may he ever be talked out of his de- 
lusions. He has heard the voices, seen the spectres, com- 
panioned with the dead and there 's the end of it. Some- 
thing like this happened to Pedro Pomaro who died, a 
rich man, a few years ago, in the little burg of Santa 



BY PATH AND TEAIL. 77 

Rosilla, at the foot of Monta Reccia. He was prospect- 
ing in the Eugenia range with Alphonso Thimm,who per- 
ished of mountain fever seven weeks after they made 
camp. Pedro buried his friend and companion in a side 
of the mountain, said a '^de profundis" for the repose 
of his soul, and returned to his lonely tent. Three days 
after the burial of his companion, he was examining some 
ore he had taken out of the shaft, when he saw Alphonso 
coming toward him. He dropped the sample and began 
to run, shouting for help. He fell at last from exhausi- 
tion and lost consciousness. When he returned to his 
senses, Thimm was gone and Pedro retraced his way back 
to his tent. The next afternoon, at about 4 o 'clock, when 
he was working at the shaft, Alphonso again appeared^ 
and held him by his glittering eye, as did the Ancient 
Mariner the wedding guest. He beckoned to Pedro to 
follow him and Pedro followed. The ghost led him away 
to the north, over rocky, broken ridges, and at last 
stopped. Then he took Pedro by the arm and said, 
' ' Come here to-morrow and dig. ' ' Thimm vanished, and 
Pedro, marking the spot the ghostly finger pointed out, 
dragged himself back to his tent. He awoke at noon the 
next day, cooked and eat his simple meal, and, shoulder- 
ing his miner's pick, returned to the place shown him by 
his dead companion. Here he discovered and located the 
''El ColTado" mine, which he sold to a Mexican syndi- 
cate for 30,000 pesos. Ghost or no ghost, Pedro found 
the mine, and from the proceeds of the sale built him- 
self a pretentious and comfortable homse, occupied to- 
day By one of his daughters with her husband and chil- 
dren. 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE DEAD OF THE DESERT. 



I was privileged last evening to be the guest of Don 
Estaban Guiteras and his charming family, and when 
it was time to renew the expression of my appreciation 
of his hospitality and bid him good night, I deeply re- 
gretted that Mexican etiquette forbade me to prolong 
my visit. Don Estaban is now in the evening of a life 
largely spent in deserts and mountains, and it is allotted 
to few men to pass through his experiences and retain a 
fair measure of health, or indeed, to survive. Wind- 
tanned and sun-scorched, he is a rugged example of in- 
domitable courage and of unshaken determination, to 
whom good luck and success came when despair was rid- 
ing on his shadow. 

I questioned him of the desert, the mountains, the can- 
yons, and never was boy preparing for his first commu- 
nion more familiar with his catechism than was Don Es- 
taban with the gruesome wonders of the lonely places of 
the peninsula. 

He told me of a region where many men had died of 
thirst, and to which flocks of ducks and water fowl came 
year after year in the migratory season ; of places where 
rain is almost unknown, yet where clouds come of a night 
and, breaking on some lofty peak, hurl thousands of tons 
of water upon the land, altering the forms and shapes of 
mountains, ploughing deep gorges here, and there fill- 
ing others with great boulders, and changing the face 
of the country. He spoke of deserts where men go mad 
with heat, throw their canteen, lialf-filled with life-saA^ng 



80 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

water, out into the waste of sand, and, tearing and rip- 
ping every shred of clothing from their emaciated bodies, 
shout at and damn the imaginary fiends mocking them. 
He asked me why it was that the skulls of men, who per- 
ish of heat and thirst on the desert, split wide open as 
soon as life has left their trembling limbs! I answered 
I had never heard of the weird and singular phenomenon. 
''Yes," he continued, ''I have seen dead men in the 
Hormiga desert, and the skull of every one of them was 
gaping. So dry is the air of these regions, so hungry is 
it for the heart's blood of its victim, that no sooner do 
men die than the hot air envelopes them, and, like a 
devil-fish, sucks from their tissues, veins and arteries all 
blood and water. I have followed the trail of dead men 
by the shreds and rags, the knife, revolver and canteen 
flung away and torn from them in their delirium; and 
when I came upon their bodies, the hair was ashen gray, 
the skulls split open and the bodies stark naked. Of tha 
skull, the remorseless heat makes a veritable steam chest, 
and when the sutured bone walls can no longer stand the 
awful strain, the skull splits open and the brain pro- 
trudes. I was traveling one afternoon with a companion 
over the Muerto desert when the braying of one of my 
burros called us to a halt. A walking burro never brays 
while the sun shines unless it sees or scents danger. 
Lifting my field glass I saw, far away to our left, a man 
evidently in distress. We altered our course, and, as we 
drew to hailing distance, the man, completely naked, ran 
to meet us, wildly gesticulating, ^Ritrarse, ritrarse' — go 
back, go back — he shouted, 'the demons are too many for 
us, let us run, let us run.' We gave the poor fellow a 
few sips of water, and after a while fed him chocolate and 
crackers, and brought him with us. Striking out diagon- 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 81 

ally across the sands, we found his canteen, three-quar- 
ters full of clear, fresh water. When his mind was giv- 
ing away he sat down to rest, and, rising, strayed away, 
he knew not whither, forgetting his food and water. ' ' 

"Why do men lose their reason in the desert?" I asked 
Don Estaban. 

"Well," said he, "many of these men, by dissipation 
and evil habits in early manhood have weakened an4 im- 
paired their brains. Others were born with a weak men- 
tality, so that when the merciless heat beats down upon 
them, when fatigue, and often hunger and thirst, seize 
upon them, the weakest part of the human system is the 
first to surrender. Then the intense and sustained si- 
lence of the desert, the immeasurable waste of sand 
around them, and the oppression on the mind of the in- 
terminable desolation and solitude carry melancholy to 
the soul, and the weakened mind breaks down. 

"It is what happens, at times, to men who go out on 
the desert; thej^ perish and are heard of no more. The 
drifting sand covers them, and when j^ears after their 
burial, a hurricane of wind races over the desert, it scat- 
ters the sand which hides them, opens the grave as it were, 
and carrying the bodies with it, separates the bones and 
drops them here and there on the bosom of the ocean of 
sand. A curious thing," continued Don Estaban, "hap- 
pens when the strong winds blow on the desert, a some- 
thing occurs which always reminds me of the continu- 
ous presence of God everj^where and of His providence. 
Does not the Bible somewhere speak of the birds which 
the Heavenly Father feedeth and the lilies of the field 
which He cares forf Well, the desert plants are a living 
proof of God's love for all created things. 

' ' When these sandstorms are due, and before they rush 



82 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

in upon the mighty waste of silence and sand, the cacti 
and the flower-bearing plants droop down and lie low 
along the earth. Then, when the storms have passed, the 
plants slow^ly, cautiously, as if to make sure their enemy 
is gone, rise again to their full height. Only the mesquite 
and grease-wood of toughened and hardened fibre refuse 
to bow down to the tyrant of the hurricane, and unless torn 
up by the roots they never yield. But the cacti, save 
alone the pitahaya, of giant strength, tremble at the ap- 
proach of the storm, contract, shrivel up and lie low. 

"I have often, in my tramps across deserts, stopped 
and examined a cactus which we call the 'Rodillo.' It 
has no roots, is perfectly rounded, and its spires or nee- 
dles, for some mysterious reason, point inward, as if its 
enemy were within itself. Unless it draws its nourish- 
ment from the air, I do not know how it survives. It is 
the plaything of the winds. A\'lien the sand storm riots 
in the desert, the wind plays with the ' Rodillo ' and rolls 
it along forty or fifty miles." 

"How often do these storms come, senor?" 

''Well, it's this way; for your winters in the North 
you have snow and ice, in the South they have rain ; here 
on our deserts we have winds, and these winds are with 
us for three months, mild as a sea breeze to-day, and to- 
morrow mailing with the speed of a hurricane. But to 
come back to the ' Eodillo. ' When the storm of wind has 
lifted, this ball cactus is left on the desert, and if during 
the vernal equinox rain falls, the plant throws out a few 
rootlets, gets a grip somewhere in the sand till it flowers 
and seeds, and is off again with the next wind. ' ' 

' ' Is there any hope for a man if he runs short of water 
forty or fifty miles out in the desert?" 

''A man," replied my host, "who is taught to desert 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 83 

ways, never dies of thirst. An Indian will enter a desert 
stretching away for two hundred miles, carrying with 
him neither food nor water, and yet it is a thing unheard 
of for an Indian to go mad on the sandy waste, or die of 
hmiger or thirst. God in His kindness and providence 
has made provision for man and animal, even in the 
great deserts. There is no desolation of sand so iltterly 
bare and barren that here and there upon its forbidden 
surface there may not be found patches of the grease- 
wood, the mesquite and the cactus. Now the cholla, and 
tuna, and the most of the cacti, bear fruit in season, and 
from these fruits the Indians make a score of dainty 
dishes. Even when not bearing, their barks and roots, 
when properly prepared, will support life. Nor need any- 
man die of thirst, for the pitahaya and suaharo cacti are 
reservoirs of water, cool, fresh and plentiful. But then, 
one must know how to tap the stream. By plunging a 
knife into the heart, the water begins to ooze out slowly 
and unsatisfactorily, but still enough comes to save a 
man's life. Of course, you know that the man familiar 
with the moods of the desert never travels without a can, 
matches and a hatchet. When he is running short of 
water he makes for the nearest bunch of columnar cacti, 
as the pitahaya and suaharo are called by us. He selects 
his tree and cuts it down, having already made two fires 
eigh't or ten feet apart. Then he makes a large incision 
in the middle of the tree, cuts off the butt and the end, 
and places the log between the fires, ends to fires. The 
heat of the fires drives the water in the log to its center, 
when it begins to flow from the cut already made into 
his can. It is by this method the Indian and the expert 
desert traveler renew their supply of water." 

Communing with myself, on the way to my hotel, I 



84 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

tliought, ''So, after all is said and done, education is very 
much a matter of locality. In large centers of popula- 
tion the theologian, the philosopher, the scientist, is a 
great man ; but thrown on his own resources, on the wide 
deserts, in the immense forests, he is a nobody and dies. 
On the other hand, the man bred to desert ways or 
trained to forest life, is the educated man in the wilder- 
ness, for he has conquered its secrets. That training, 
then, apart from the supernatural, which best prepares 
a man to succeed in his sphere, which develops the facul- 
ties demanded by his occupation or calling, which makes 
him an honest, rugged, manly man, is education in the 
best acceptance of the often ill-used term." 



CHAPTER X. 



THE FIGHT FOR LIFE. 



Don Estaban Guiteras did me the kindness to accept 
an invitation to dine with me this evening and pay me a 
parting \dsit, for I leave Buena Vista to-morrow, and 
may never again tread its hospitable streets. He ac- 
companied me, after dinner, to my hotel room, and after 
opening a bottle of Zara Maraschino and lighting our 
cigars, I induced him to continue the conversation along 
the lines traced out the evening I was his guest. 

He spoke of beds of lakes on mountains 4,000 feet above 
the sea, and of fossil and petrified skeletons of strange 
fish and animals found in the beds ; of the singular habit 
of the desert rat which, when about to die, climbs the 
mesquite tree and prepares its own grave in the crotch; 
of the desert ants, which build mounds miles apart in 
the desert and open an underground tunnel between 
them. He told of the migration of ants to the moun- 
tains, the military precision of their movements on the 
march, their racapity, the blight of all vegetable life 
after the myriad hosts had passed, and of the red and 
black ants and their fierce and exterminating battles. 
He referred to the strange ways of the "side winder," 
or desert rattle snake, of the wisdom of lizards and 
other reptiles, and of animals living and dying on the 
great ocean of sand, and of the skeletons of men who 
went mad and died alone on the wilderness of desola- 
tion. 



86 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

DON ESTABAn's story. 

''Were you ever lost on the desert, Seuor GuiterasI" 

''No," he answered, "but when I was a young man 
and was not as well acquainted with the ways of the 
Disierto as I am now, I had a trying experience, and 
nearly lost my life. 

' ' It was on the ' Muerto, ' and I wandered ninety miles 
over sands so hot that I could scarcely walk on them, 
though wearing thick-soled shoes. The Muerto desert is 
in circumference 230 miles, and is, in fact, the bed of an 
ancient sea, which evaporated or disappeared many thou- 
sands of years ago. During the months of July and Au- 
gust the Muerto is a furnace, where the silence is oppres- 
sive, the glare of the ash-hot sand blinds the eyes, and 
the burning air sucks water and life from the body of 
man or beast. I left the ' Digger ' camp at the foot of the 
Corneja mountain early in the week, intending to in- 
spect a copper 'find' discovered by an Indian some fifty 
miles southwest of the Digger camp. The trail carried 
me through an ancient barranca, widening into a gorge 
which opened into a canyon, through which in season 
flows what is called the Rio Rata. Here I made camp for 
the day, cooked a meal and slept, for I had started as 
early as 3 o'clock in the morning. The heat within the 
canyon marked 90 degrees on a small pocket thermome- 
ter I carried to test the temperature of the nearest water 
to the reported 'find.' As the air about me carried only 
10 or 12 degrees of humidity, this heat in no way incon- 
venienced me. At 4 o'clock that afternoon I awoke, con- 
tinued on through the canyon, and in two hours entered 
the desert. 

"You must understand that in this countrv no man in 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 87 

his senses attempts the crossing of a great desert during 
the day. The sun would roast him, the sands, hot as vol- 
acnic ash, would burn him up, and he could not carry 
enough water to meet the evaporation from his body. For 
half the night I made good progress, so good indeed that 
I began to whisper to myself that before 8 o'clock of the 
morning I would strike the foothills of the Sierras Blan- 
cas and leave the desert behind me. 

"Perhaps I had been pushing myself too much, or it 
may be that I was not in the best of condition, but about 
3 in the morning I sat down to rest. I was traveling light 
and brought with me only enough water and food to last 
me fourteen hours, knowing that when I reached the 
Blancas I could find the mining camp of Pedro Marrila. 
To a meditative man, the desert at night has a charm 
deepening into a fascination. The intense and sustained 
silence, the great solitude, the limitless expansion of 
white sand glistening under a bright moon, and innum- 
erable stars of wondrous brilliancy strangely affect the 
mind and bear in upon the soul a sensation of awe, of 
reverence and a consciousness of the presence of God. 

*' After a time, an inexpressible sense of drowsiness 
possessed me. I had often traveled far on deserts, but 
never before had I felt so utterly tired and sleepy. I re- 
membered saying to myself, 'Just for a half hour,' and 
when I awoke the sun was rising over the mountains. I 
rose to my feet, blessed myself, and moved on, knowing 
I was going to have a hard fight of it. 

''At 10 o'clock the heat was that of a smelting fur- 
nace. As I walked my feet sank in the yielding sand. I 
was very thirsty, but I could not touch the water in my 
canteen, treasuring it as a miser his gold. The blazing 
sun sucked away all perspiration, before it had time to 



88 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

become sweat and collect upon tlie skin. To sweat would 
have helped me, but no man sweats in the desert. I now 
discarded all my clothing but my undershirt, drawers^ 
hat and boots, even my stockings I flung upon the dry 
sand. 

"And now, for the first time, I took a drink from my 
canteen, not much, but enough to partially quench the 
fire of my parched tongue. T had my senses about me, I 
retained" my will, and I took the water, for I knew that 
my tongue was beginning to swell. At noon I struck a 
pot-hole, or sink, half filled with clear, sparkling water. 
I took some of it up in the lid of my canteen, touched my 
tongue to it and found it to be, what I suspected, impreg- 
nated with copperas and arsenic. My body was on fire, 
and thinking to obtain some relief, I soaked my shirty 
drawers and shoes in the beautiful cool water, and in my 
wet clothes struck for the mountains, looming some 
twenty miles ahead of me. I was a new man, and 
for an hour I felt neither thirst nor fatigue. 

"Then a strange numbness began to creep over my 
body. It was not pain, but a feeling akin to what I have 
been told incipient paralytics feel when the demon of 
paralysis has a grip on them. I sat down, drank some 
water, and for the first time since I left the canyon's 
mouth, took some food. 'When I tried to rise I fell over 
on my side, but I got up, lifted my canteen and looked 
around me." 

"Pardon me, Don Estaban, was your mind becoming 
affected?" 

"No, my brain was clear and my will resolute. They 
say hope dies hard. My hope never died, I pushed on, 
resolved if I must die, it would be only when my tired or 
diseased limbs could no longer obey my will. Ten miles. 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 89 

at least, I walked, the fierce sun beating down remorse- 
lessly upon me. Walked, did I say? I dragged myself 
through hell, lor my bones were grinding in the joints, 
my skin was aflame and three times I vomited. I fought 
the cravings of my body, for if I sat down I might never 
arise. Not a living thing was anywhere in sight. I be- 
lieve I would have welcomed a brood of rattlesnakes, of 
scorpions, of tarantulas, so deathly quiet was the air 
around me, 

' ' Out in the lonely desert I deliberately stripped to the 
nude, dipped my hands in my canteen and rubbed my 
body. I then, as best I could, beat and shook my shirt and 
drawers, for I now began to suspect I was being poisoned 
by the copperas and arsenic in which I had dipped my 
clothes. Vios, how hot the air was, how fiercely blazed 
the sun, how the burning sand threw out and into my face 
and eyes the pitiless glare and heat. 

''I dressed, and, taking my canteen, slowly but reso- 
lutely set my face for the mountains, now nearing me. 
Once I fell, but in falling saved the water. With a pain- 
ful effort I rose up, took a mouthful of water, and on- 
ward I went, while the firmament was cloudless o'er my 
head." 

Don Estaban paused in his painful and fascinating 
narrative, took a few sipS of maraschino, and said: 

' ' I will weary you no further with the story of my aw- 
ful experience in that accursed waste of sand and heat. 
I reached the foothills, how I scarcely know, but I lost 
consciousness, not my reason, and those who found me 
and cared for me told me they thought I was dead when 
they lifted me from the arroyo into which I had fallen." 

''Did you ever get over the effects of that awful trip?" 
I asked. 



90 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

"Oh, yes," he said, "in three months I was as well 
as I ever was. We Mexicans are tough, and if we only- 
take care of ourselves when young, we can stand any- 
thing. You see, like the Irish, we are the sons of pure 
mothers, who obey the laws of God and nature." 

When Don Estaban rose to depart, he took from his 
pocket a photograph of himself and his family, and 
handed it to me, saying: ''Espero que le volvere a ver a 
listed pronto" — I hope to see you soon again. 

I took it gratefully and tenderly from his hand, assur- 
ing him of my appreciation of his kindness, my affection 
and admiration for himself and his family, and prom- 
ised to send him from Mexico City a copy of my "Days 
and Nights in the Tropics." I accompanied him to the 
street, antJ, in farewell, shook the hand of a straight and 
honest man, whose rugged face I may never look upon 
again. 




-Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York. 

HALF-BLOOD COWBOYS, LOWER CALIFORNIA. 



CHAPTER XI. 



THE DIGGER INDIANS. 



Although Lower California remains to-day as an awful 
example of some tremendous bouleversement in the Mio- 
cene age, a land of gloom and largely of abject sterility, 
yet it has redeeming features, and there are hopes of 
salvation for this gruesome peninsula. For example, 
there have lately been discovered on the Gulf coast large, 
very large deposits of sulphur, and north of La Paz, im- 
mense beds of almost pure salt. At and around the Cer- 
abo islands, the pearl fisheries, once so productive and 
valuable, are again becoming promising. In the northern 
part of the peninsula there is much excellent grazing 
land, calculated at 900,000 acres, where alfalfa, burr and 
wild clover, and fields of wild oats, four feet long and 
full of grain, thrive. Along the shores of the Bay of 
San Marco they are now quarrying from vast beds the 
finest alabaster in America. At Todos Santos there are 
large quarries of white and variegated marble, and in 
the neighboring mountains great deposits of copper ore 
carrying much silver. At Ensenada the Rothschilds con- 
trol the mines, and have erected large smelting works to 
reduce the ore. 

Lower California has two capitals, Ensenada, on the 
North Pacific coast, and La Paz, far down on the gulf. 
The tremendous barriers of mountains and deserts be- 
tween the two coasts and the distance by water around 
Cape San Lucas, have made two capitals a necessity. La 
Paz, at the head of a fine, deep bay of the same name, 
has a population of about 3,000, nearly all Mexicans. It 



92 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

is a town of one broad, straight street, with witewashed 
houses of stone, one story high, tree-shaded, verandahed 
and jalousied. The Tropic of Cancer cuts through the 
San Jose valley to the south. The town and the land 
around it for many miles are a dream of joy. Here the 
orange groves stretch away for many miles on every 
side, bordered with rows of cocoanut palms which re- 
spond to the slightest touch of breeze, and wave their 
fern-shaped crowns. In the morning, when the sun is 
rising beyond the giant mountains, the air of the valley 
is vibrant with the songs of mocking birds and Califor- 
nia magpies of many hued plumage. Here also, in the 
alluvian depressions, arborescent ferns with wide- 
spreading leaves, tower forty feet in the midst of tropi- 
cal trees, whose branches are festooned with many va- 
rieties of orchids and flowering parasites of most bril- 
liant hues. 

The completion of the Panama canal will mean much 
prosperity to the west coast, for a railroad will then be 
built from Magdalena Bay to San Diego, Southern Cali- 
fornia, connecting with the Southern Pacific for New 
Orleans, Chicago and the East. The west coast will then 
probably become a great health resort, for the climate 
is unsurpassed and chalybate and thermal springs are 
everywhere. Some far-seeing Boston capitalists, antici- 
pating a great future for this section of Lower Califor- 
nia, have purchased the Flores estate, 427 miles long by 
sixteen wide. The purchase includes harbor rights on 
Magdalena Bay, and is the longest coast line owned by 
any one man or firm in the world. 

The population of Lower California is about 25,000, 
principally Mexicans and half-castes. There are 600 or 
700 foreigners engaged in mining, and some Yaqui and 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 93 

Mayo Indians, pearl fishers in the large bay of Pechil- 
inque. 

To me, the most interesting and pathetically attract- 
i"ve members of the human race in North America are the 
melancholy remnants of the early tribes of Lower Cali- 
fornia withering away on the desert lands and moun- 
tain ranges, and now almost extinct. In the history of the 
human race we have no record of any tribe, clan or fam- 
ily that had fallen so low or had approached as near as 
it was possible for human beings to the state of offal 
animals, as the wretched Cochimis, or ' ' Digger Indians, ' ' 
of Lower California. The Cochimis, unlike any other 
family or tribe of American Indians, occupied a distinct 
position of their own, and, indeed, may have been a dis- 
tinct people. Shut off from the mainland by the Gulf of 
Cortez to the east, and impassable deserts on the north, 
they were isolated, it may be, for thousands of years 
from all communication with other aboriginal tribes, 
and until the coming of the Spaniards under Otondo, they 
knew nothing of the existence of any other people ex- 
cept, perhaps, the coast tribes of Sonora and Sinoloa. 
Their language and tribal dialects bore no affinity to those 
of the northern or southern nations. It is doubtful, in- 
deed, if they were of the same race, for their customs, 
habits, tribal peculiarities and characteristics allied 
them rather to the people of the South Pacific Islands. 

Sir William Hunter in his chapter on the "Non- Aryan 
Races," describes the Andamans, or "dog-faced man- 
eaters," as a fragment of the human race which had 
reached the lowest depths of hopeless degradation. After 
the Andamans, he classed the "Leaf -wearers," of Wissa. 
Dr. Kane, the Arctic explorer, thought it was not pos- 
sible for human beings to fall lower in degeneracy than 



9 J: BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

the fugitive P]skimos, the ''Ka-Kaaks," whom he met at 
''Godsend Ledge," where his ship was ice-locked and 
where fifty-seven of his dogs went mad from cold and 
died. These Indians were foul, verminized and filthy, 
and when he fed them raw meat and blubber ' ' each slept 
after eating, his raw chunk lying beside him on the buf- 
falo skin, and, as he awoke, his first act was to eat and 
the next to sleep again. They did not lie down, but slum- 
bered away in a sitting posture, with the head resting 
on the breast." 

These savages were compelled by the intense cold of 
their northern home to cloth themselves and construct 
some sort of shelters, and even the Wissa family, or 
''leaf wearers," of Sir William Hunter, yielded to an 
instinct of shame, but the ' ' Digger Indians ' ' roamed en- 
tirely naked and built no temporary or permanent shel- 
ters. Their vermin infested hair drooped long over their 
faces and backs ; they were tanned, by unnumbered years 
of sun and wind exposure, to the hue of West Coast 
negroes, and, worst of all, they were victims of porno- 
graphic and sexual indecencies pitiful in their destruct- 
ive results. A member of Otondo's expedition and col- 
ony of 1683, writing of Lower California, says: "We 
found the land inhabited by brutish, naked people, so- 
domitic, drunken and besotted. ' ' 

The noble savage of Dryden and Cooper is all right 
in poetry and romance, but the real man, when you meet 
him and know him, is indeed a creature to be pitied, 
against whom the elements have conspired and with 
whom circumstances have dealt harshly, God deliver us 
from the man of nature, unrestrained by fear of punish- 
ment, unchecked by public opinion, by law or order, un- 
tamed by social amenities, unawed by the gosj)el of the 



BY PATH AND TRAIL, 95 

hereafter. The nearer we come to the man who has no 
higher law than his own will, nor knows obedience to a 
higher authority than himself, the nearer we come to a 
dangerous animal who eats raw meat, indecently exposes 
himself, loves dirt, hates peace, wallows in the filth of 
unrestrained desire and kills the weaker man he, does not 
like whenever the temptation comes and the opportunity 
is present. And low as the man can fall, the woman 
falls lower. ''Corruptio optimae pessima" — the corrup- 
tion of the best is ever the worst — and all nature exposes 
nothing to the pity and melancholy wonder of man more 
supremely sad and heartrending that woman reduced to 
savagery. 

The Jesuit fathers, who established sixteen missions in 
Lower California, beginning in 1683, sent to their pro- 
vincial in Mexico City from time to time, accurate reports 
of the condition of the tribes and the progress of religion 
and civilization among them. From the letters of these 
great priests which, in places, bear upon the degeneracy 
and pitiable condition of the Lower California Indians, 
and the appalling degradation to which it is possible, un- 
der adverse conditions, for human beings to descend, 
we obtain all the information extant of these wretched 
tribes. Many of these letters or '^Eelaciones," are yet in 
manuscript, and to the average student of missionary 
history, inaccessible. The historical value of these ''Re- 
laciones" has of course been long understood by schol- 
ars, but, to the general reader, even to the educated gen- 
eral reader, they were and are somewhat of a myth. At 
a very early period their value was recognized by that 
great traveler and historian Charlevoix, who in 1743 
wrote : ' ' There is no other source to which we can resort 
to learn the progress of religion among the Indians, and 



96 BY PATH AND TKAIL. 

to know the tribes * * * of the Apostolic labors of the 
missionaries they give very edifying accounts." Some 
day, it is to be hoped, the Mexican government, follow- 
ing the example of the Canadian parliament, which in 
1858 printed the "Relations of the Jesuits" in Canada, 
will give to the world in editional form the letters of the 
Jesuits in Mexico and Lower California, However, from 
the books compiled from these letters, such as those of 
Fathers Venagas, Clavigero and Verre, we obtain a most 
pathetic and melancholy narrative of the woeful state 
of the tribes before the coming of the fathers. 

Apart from the divine courage and enthusiasm of the 
Spanish missionary fathers, nothing has excited my ad- 
miration more than the learning and scholarship of the 
priests sent by the Catholic church for the evangelizing 
of savage tribes and barbarous peoples. From an off- 
hand study of the brutish and deplorable ignorance of 
many of the tribes, it would be quite reasonable to as- 
sume that men of simple faith, good health and a knowl- 
edge of the catechism of the Council of Trent, would be 
best adapted for the redemption of a people ''seated in 
darkness and in the shadow of death." But Rome, with 
her accumulated wisdom of centuries and unparalleled 
experience of human nature under adverse conditions, 
trains her neophytes destined for foreign missions to 
the highest possible efficiency. We are not, then, when 
acquainted with her methods of education, surprised to 
find among her priests, living amid the squalid surround- 
ings of savagery, men of high scholarship and special- 
ists in departmental science. Of these was Father Sigis- 
mundo Taravel, a pioneer of the California missions. 
In 1729 he established the mission of St. Rose, near the 
Bay of Palms. Before volunteering for the California 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 97 

missions he was a professor in the University of Alcala, 
Spain, and when he entered the desert and mountain sol- 
itudes of this peninsula was in the prime of his young 
manhood. He was dowered with exceptional talents, and 
when commissioned by his superior, Father Echivari, to 
collect material for the history of the land and its inhabi- 
tants, he brought to the discharge of his task exceptional 
industry, unflagging patience and great ability. For 
twenty-three years he remained in Lower California, in- 
structing and Christianizing the tribes around the Bay of 
Palms and visiting the most remote corners of the pe- 
ninsula in quest of material for his history. He took 
the altitude of mountains, determined the courses of un- 
derground rivers, made a geodetic survey of the south- 
ern end of the peninsula, and gave names to many of the 
bays and inlets. Broken in health, he retired to the Jes- 
uit college at Guadalajara, Mexico, where he completed 
his history in manuscript. From this voluminous work. 
Fathers Clavigero and Vinegas and less known writers 
on Lower California, drew much of the material for their 
publications. 

I have entered upon this digression that you may un- 
derstand the reliability and accuracy of the information 
we inherit bearing on the daily life and habits of a peo- 
ple which, I believe, to have been the most degraded 
known to history. 

There are certain disgusting details entering into the 
social life and habits of this unhappy and abandoned 
people which I dare not touch upon. Even the barbar- 
ous tribes of Sinaloa and Sonora, from their privileged 
lands and hunting grounds across the gulf, looked down 
upon the half-starved creatures, and held them in detes- 



98 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

tation, as did the Puritans the wrecks of humanity that 
occupied the soil of Massachusetts. 

The Europeans of Otondo's time, who attempted, in 
1683, to open a settlement on the Peninsula, were aston- 
ished at a condition of savagery lower than they had ever 
heard of, and their disgust and horror with the land and 
its people were so great that they abandoned their inten- 
tion of remaining in the country. 

Powerless from the awful conditions under which they 
were compelled to support existence, knowing nothing of 
cultivation of any kind, doomed to imprisonment in a 
land carrying an anathema of sterility and where large 
game had become extinct, the tribes of Lower California, 
among all the barbarous and savage people of America, 
' ' trod the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God, the 
Almighty. ' ' 

The greater part of the peninsula at the time of the 
coming of the fathers, was in possession of the Cochimis, 
the Gualcuris and the Pericuis, who occupied the south- 
ern part and some of the adjacent lands. 

They were a long haired, wild-looking people, scorched 
into negro blackness, naked and not ashamed. Morals, 
in the technical sense, they had none, they could not be 
charged with sin, for they had no knowledge of the law, 
and therefore they could commit no breach of the law. 
They bored holes in the ears, lips and nose, inserting in 
the openings bones, shells or sticks. They bore only 
names of common gender, which they received while yet 
in the womb. "Without fixed abodes they roamed the 
country in search of food, supporting life on snakes, 
roasted grasshoppers and ants, on wild fruit and roots 
dug from the cacti beds, and because of this rooting habit 
they were called by the Spaniards "Cavadores" — the Dig- 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 99 

gers. Here is what Father Ugarte writes of the things 
on which they sustained life : ' ' They live on rats, mice 
and worms, lizards and snakes, bats, grasshoppers and 
crickets; a kind of harmless green caterpillar, about a 
finger long, on roots and barks and an abominable white 
worm, the length and thickness of one's thumb." Father 
Clavigero adds they never washed themselves, and that 
in their filthiness they surpassed the brutes. Their hair 
was crawling with vermin, and their stupidity was so 
dense that they could not count beyond five, and this 
number they expressed by one hand. The different 
tribes, Father Basgert tells us, represented by no means 
rational beings, but resembled far more herds of wild 
swine, which run about according to their own liking, be- 
ing together to-day and scattered to-morrow, till they meet 
again by accident at some future time. They had no mar- 
riage ceremony, nor any word in their language to express 
marriage. Like birds and beasts they paired off accord- 
ing to fancy. They practiced polygamy, each man taking 
as many wives as would attach themselves to him, they 
were his slaves and supported him. Their forebears had 
exterminated or driven into the inaccessible mountain 
canyons the larger game of the peninsula, the deer, the 
antelope, the big-horn, the ibex. They tracked the flight 
of buzzards, with greedy eyes, and followed to share with 
them the putrefying carcasses of animals dead from dis- 
ease or killed by pumas or mountain lions. 

When, by good luck, they captured a hare or a jack- 
rabbit, they attached a small morsel of the raw and bleed- 
ing flesh to a fiber cord and, after swallowing it, drew it 
out after a few minutes, and passed the partially di- 
gested mass to another, who repeated the foul act. Yet 
they were not cannibals, and in abstaining from human 



100 ■ BY PATH AND TRAIL, 

jflesh offered a striking contrast to the Aztecs of Mexica 
City, who, fed on human flesh, cut and salted the bodies 
of prisoners captured in battle and sold the meat at the 
public markets. They were a fierce and savage nation, 
without law, tribal rules or government of any kind, un- 
ruly and brutal in their passions, mercilessly cruel to 
their enemies, were more gregarious than social and of a 
cold blooded disposition often manifested in treachery^ 
in relentless persecutions and in assassinations. Oton- 
do's colonists charged them in addition with asinine stu- 
pidity, ingratitude, inconstancy and irredeemable lazi- 
ness. The Jesuit fathers wrote more kindly of them, 
they condoned their bestiality and shameless licentious- 
enss by reason of their squalid surroundings and sordid 
conditions, but then we must remember that from the 
day the Jesuits opened their first mission among them^ 
the "Digger Indians" became their spiritual children 
and wards of the church. This was the land and these 
the people to whom, in their unexampled abandonment 
and unspeakable degeneracy, the missionary priests of 
the Society of Jesus brought the message of salvation, 
the hope of happiness in this life and the assurance of a 
resurrection to a higher and better life beyond the grave. 
Now it may be asked why I have dwelt at such length 
on this unpleasant subject, why I have pictured so grue- 
somely, even if trutlifully, the disgusting habits of a 
foul and filthy people? I have done so that those who 
now read this work may learn and understand what man- 
ner of men they were who, for Christ's sake and for 
the sake of perishing souls, said "good-bye" forever to 
their friends at home, to all that men in this world value 
and prize, to the teeming vineyards of sunny Spain, to- 
ease, comfort and the delights of companionship with re- 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 101 

fined or scholarly minds, and doomed themselves volun- 
tarily to the horrors of hourly association with revolting 
vice, with repellent surroundings, to daily fellowshij) 
with filthy and unhospitable hordes. The "Digger In- 
dian" was a man, so was the priest. The Digger Indian 
had descended to the level, and in some instances below 
the level of the brute ; the priest rose to the heights of a 
hero and to the plane of the saint. What conspiracy of 
accidents, what congeries of events, what causes com- 
bined to make a brute of one and a civilized and an hon- 
orable man of the other! Well, unrestrained passions^ 
ungoverned will, unregulated desires, contempt for all 
law human and divine in the beginning and then entire 
ignorance of it, and finally well-nigh desperate condi- 
tions of existence and almost utter destitution and, there- 
fore, impossible conditions of civilization, made the Dig- 
ger Indian. And the Jesuit priest, the hero and the saint! 
Ethnologically, it is not so long ago since the ancestors 
of the priest were barbarians, and on the downward road 
to savagery. When Pope Innocent I., early in the fifth 
century, sent his missionaries to civilize and preach the 
doctrines of our Divine Lord to the Spaniards and those 
of the Iberian peninsula, they were, as we learn from 
the letter of the Pope to Decentius, given over to foul- 
ness and the worship of demons. The church lifted them 
out of their degradation, civilized and Christianized 
tEem and made of them what Voltaire termed * ' an heroic 
nation." The same church with her consecrated mis- 
sionaries was leading out from the shadow of death the 
Digger Indians and would have made a civilized and 
Christian community of them if she had been left for 
fifty years in undisturbed possession of the field. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE JESUITS AND THE DIGGER INDIANS. 

The true idea of an effective religion, the idea which 
is formulated in the word Christian, is that it should not 
merely be fully capable of adaptation to the habits of 
all climates and natures, but that in each locality it is 
able to meet the wants of all conditions of human life and 
of all types of minds. Our divine Lord and Master 
taught the highest lessons of virtue and the most heroic 
and has exercised so deep an influence on human souls, 
that it may be truly said his active life of three and one- 
half years has done more to regenerate and humanize- 
our race than all the disquisitions of philosophers and 
all the discourses and writings of moralists since the 
world began. Among the believers in the Divinity of 
Christ, and more especially in the church which he estab- 
lished to perpetuate his doctrine and sacraments, we 
naturally look to find men, who by their lives and con- 
duct furnish us examples of the influence on their souls 
of the grace and teaching of the divine Master. But par- 
ticularly do we expect from those whom Cicero called 
di\4ne men and whom we honor with the exalted title of 
priests lessons of sublime abnegation, of purity of life, 
and, when the occasion demands it, of heroic sacrifice. 
To the credit of the Christian religion and for the honor 
of our race the centuries proclaim since the resurrection 
of our Lord the sanctity and heroism of vast numbers of 
these consecrated men who enobled their generations and 
died confessors and martyrs. Of these were the mem- 
bers of the missionary orders of the church and among 
them were many of the order established by Ignatius 



104 BY PATH AND TKAIL. 

Loyola for the conversion of the heathen and the sav- 
age. 

The Jesuit fathers on the American missions showed 
to the world an example of missionary zeal, a sublime 
enthusiasm, a steadiness of perseverance, of suffering 
and of persecution heroically borne with a hope and 
resignation which, while memory lives, will encircle their 
name with a halo of glory. "No deeds," says Cicero, 
"are more laudable than those which are done without 
ostentation and far from the sight of men." Buried in 
the solitude of great wastes or amid the desolation of 
towering sierras, away from the temptations of vain 
glory, they become dead to the world and possessed 
their souls in unalterable peace. "Maligners may taunt 
the Jesuits if they will," writes Parkman, "with credu- 
lity, superstition and blind enthusiasm, but slander it- 
self cannot accuse them of hypocrisy or ambition." 

We have already learned something of the awful de- 
gradation of the tribes. Allow me to anticipate the seri- 
ous nature of the struggle the missionaries were now en- 
gaged in by an extract from a sketch of the Sonora mis- 
sion, written by one then laboring among the tribes. 
"The disposition of the Indians," writes the priest, 
"rests on four foundations, each one worse than the 
other, and they are ignorance, ingratitude, inconstancy 
and laziness. Their ignorance is appalling and causes 
them to act as children. Their ingratitude is such that 
whoever wishes to do them good, must arm himself with 
the firm resolution of looking to God for his reward, for 
should he expect gratitude from them he is sure to meet 
with disappointment. Their laziness and horror of all 
kind of work, is so great that neither exhortation, nor 
prayers, nor the threat of punishment are sufficient to 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 105 

prevail upon them to procure the necessaries of life by 
tilling their own lands; their inconstancy and want of 
resolution is heart-breaking." 

And now it may interest my readers to be informed 
of the methods and the discipline of reclamation fol- 
lowed by the missionary fathers when dealing with sav- 
ages either in northern Canada or on the shores of the 
Pacific. Religious and moral teaching naturally under- 
laid their system. They attached supreme importance 
to oral teaching and explanations of the doctrines of the 
church, iterating, reiterating and repeating till they 
were satisfied their instructions had penetrated into the 
obtuse brains of their swarthy hearers, lodged there 
and were partially, at least, understood. In the begin- 
ning and to attract them to the divine offices and instruc- 
tions they fed them after the services were over. They 
were dealing with "bearded children," as one of the 
fathers wrote and as there was only a child's brain 
in a man's body they were compelled to appeal to their 
imagination, their emotions and affections rather than 
to their intellects. Having in a measure won their good 
will they began to teach the children, singing, reading 
and writing. They composed catechisms in the native 
dialects, insisted on the children memorizing the chap- 
ters which the fathers with heroic patience explained 
and unfolded. 

They now established a children's choir, introduced 
into the services lights, incense, processions, genuflex- 
ions, beautiful vestments, the use of banners and flowers 
for the purpose of decoration. They brought from Mexr 
ico, sacred paintings and the stations of the cross which 
they used not alone as incentives to devotion but as ob- 
ject lessons in religion. The rude and simple chapels 



106 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

which they built with the help of their newly made con- 
verts were not only temples where the holy sacrifice was 
offered and prayers said, but they became consecrated 
kindergartens where the altar, the crucifix, the way of 
the cross and the painting of the Last Judgment taught 
their own lessons. By pictures, by music, by art and 
song, and symbolic representations, by patience and af- 
fection they developed the stupid minds and won over 
the callous hearts of these benighted children of the 
desert. The fathers in time choose from their converts 
assistants known as Temastranes, who taught catechism 
to the children, acted as sacristans and explained from 
time to time the rudiments of religion to the pagan In- 
dians. They appointed for every congregation a choir 
master, known as the maestro, who could read and write, 
was comissioned to lead the singers, male and female, 
and teach others to play on musical instruments. In time 
they became enamored with their work and the progjress 
they were making, so much so indeed that one of the 
fathers writes: "It is wonderful how these Indians, 
who can neither read nor write, learn and retain two, 
three or four different masses, psalms, chants of the of- 
fice of the dead, chants for Holy Week, vespers for festi- 
vals, etc." Then when the fathers succeeded in gather- 
ing them into communities and the children, under their 
fostering care, had grown into young men and women, 
they taught them different mechanical trades and many 
of the Indians became tailors, carpenters, tillers of the 
soil, blacksmiths, butchers, stone cutters and masons. ''I 
know," writes the author of the "Rudo Ensayo," ''sev- 
eral Opates and Eudebes who can work at all these 
trades and who now play on musical instruments with 
no little skill." It has always taken centuries to graft 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 107 

upon savagery anything approacliing a high civilization, 
yet in thirty years these devout priests had changed 
these children of the desert and the mountain from eat- 
ers of raw meat, stone tool users and grinders of acorn 
meal in rock bowls to tillers of the soil, weavers of cloth, 
workers in metal, players on musical instruments and 
singers of sacred hymns. 

The consecrated man who entered upon the territory 
of a savage tribe to make to the owners of the soil a 
proclamation of the will of Jesus Christ, knew from the 
history of the past that he might be murdered while de- 
livering his message. His mission demanded from him 
unflinching courage, good health, a living consciousness 
that the eye of God was upon him; demanded, in fact, 
that he clothe himself in the garments of the hero and 
the martyr. We must remember that by nature the 
missionaries were men like others of our race; swayed 
by the same impulses; animated by human hopes; agi- 
tated by the same fears; subject to the same passions.' 
But the practice of daily self-denial and self-sacrifice; 
the crucifixion of the flesh with all its earthly appetites 
and desires ; indifference to worldly honors and worldly 
rewards, contempt for the vanities of society, a life of 
hourly intercourse with heaven, and a supreme purity of 
intention raised them in time unto the plane of the super- 
natural. Outside of the immediate companions of their 
order they were unknown, they coveted obscurity and 
were satisfied to be forgotten of men. ''It is possible," 
writes Marcus Aurelius, "at once to be a divine man, yet 
a man unknown to all the world." 

It is impossible to study their lives and not feel that 
they were men eminently holy and of tender conscience, 
men acting under the abiding sense of the presence and 
omniscience of God, living in his holy fear and walking 



108 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

in his ways. "If ye labor only to please men, ye are 
fallen from your high estate," wrote Francis Xavier to 
the members of the order in Portugal. 

Preaching the precepts of self-denial to men and 
women given over to sensual indulgence, to carnal 
pleasures, and with whom freedom to think and act as 
they pleased was an immemorial right, these men of God 
came as enemies making war on the dearest traditions 
of the family and the established customs and habits of 
the t»-ibe. 

From the cradle to the grave, this religion of the 
strangers forced on their savage natures a new law of 
conduct, new habits, new conceptions of action and of 
life. It entered above all into that sphere within which 
the individual will of the savage man had been till now 
supreme, the sphere of his own hearth; it curtailed his 
power over his wife and child ; it forbade infanticide, the 
possession of more than one woman and commanded the 
abiding with that woman and with her alone. It chal- 
lenged almost every social act; it denied to the brav^ 
cruelty to an enemy and the right to torture his foe; it 
made war on his very thoughts if they were foul. It held 
up gluttony and drunkenness, to which they were wedded 
and which alone made life worth living, as abominable 
vices; it interfered with the unlawful gratification of 
sexual desire and condemned killing for revenge or gain 
under threat of eternal fire. It claimed to control every 
circumstance of life and imposed abstinences and fasts 
on men, at all times, ravenous for food and drink. 

When reading of the martyrdom of many of these 
heroic priests our wonder is, not that forty-seven of 
them were done to death when delivering the message 
of the Crucified Christ, but that any one of them escaped 
the horrors of the torch or the scalping knife. 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

THE VACA DE LUMBRE. 

The morning I left Santa Cruz for the historic town 
of Loretto I went to assist at mass in the only church in 
the village. It was as early as 6 o'clock and I was sur- 
prised and edified to see the number of Mexicans and 
Mexican half-bloods who were waiting for the service to 
begin. After mass, as I was passing and repassing, ex- 
amining the windows and certain peculiarities of the 
architecture, I was struck with the singular appearance 
of a half-breed woman who was kneeling by one of the 
pillars, with a number of children also kneeling beside 
her ; a group like which we see carved in marble on some 
of the ancient tombs of Europe. While I was studying 
from a respectful distance their features and facial ex- 
pressions, the Mexican priest who had offered up the 
Holy Sacrifice came out from the sanctuary and in a sub- 
dued voice bade me good morning. After an interchange 
of courtesies I asked him, 

''Why is this poor woman crouching there with her 
children r' 

He answered, just as if it were an every day occur- 
rence : 

''Some poor woman, I suppose, who has something to 
ask of God." 

Then observing and turning to me he said : 

"She is the wife of a Mason who was hurt by a fall 
two or three days ago, the family is quite destitute 
and no doubt they have come to ask help of God. ' ' With- 
out interrupting her devotions, I laid down by the base 



110 BY PATH AND TKAIL, 

of the pillar what was a trifle to me, but a god-send to 
her and her family; upon which, without thanking me 
except by a courteous inclination of the head, she went 
up to the high altar, followed by her children to return 
thanks to God. Now all this might be very ignorant re- 
ligion to an American Protestant, but to me it was true 
religion, and, what was more, an example of sincere faith. 
She trusted that God would supply what she wanted, she 
knew that he had said about his house being the house of 
prayer and she came to that house in faith to ask him 
for help in her troubles; and when she got what she 
wanted she evidently believed that her praj^er had been 
heard, and therefore did not thank me, whom she con- 
sidered merely the instrument, but God who had sent 
me. 

My companion and guide from the town of Jesus 
Maria was a quiet, honest representative of the Mexican 
half-breeds to be met with in almost every village of this 
peninsula. 

* * Tell me, Ignacio, ' ' I said to him in a solemn tone, late 
in the evening when we were coming out of an ugly ra- 
vine, 'Hell me of this La Llorona who haunts the moun- 
tain paths and the' lonely roads leading to the towns^ 
is she worse than the Vaca de Lumhre, the gleaming cow, 
that at midnight suddenly appears on the Plaza del Ig- 
lesia and after a moment's pause bounds forward, and 
with streams of fire and flame flowing from her eyes and 
nostrils, rushes like a blazing whirlwind through the 
village. ' ' 

*'Ah, senor, she is worse, indeed she is worse than 
the fiery cow, for it is known to everybody thaj: while the 
vaca is terrible to look at, and on a dark night it is aw- 
ful, she never does harm to any one. The little children^ 



BY PATH AND TKAIL, 111 

too, are all in bed and asleep, when the Vaca de Lumbre 
appears, and it is only ns grown people that see her and 
that not often. But the weeping woman indeed is harm- 
ful ; it is well, senor, that we all know her when she ap- 
pears, and we are so afraid of her that no one will say 
yes or no to her when she speaks, and it is well. Many 
queer things and many evil spirits, it is known to us all, 
are around at night and they are angry, when on dark 
nights there is thunder and rain and lightning, but the 
Wailing Woman is the worst of all of them. Sometimes, 
sir, she is out of her head and is running, her hair 
streaming after her and she is tossing her hands above 
her head and shrieking the names of her lost children 
Rita and Anita. But when you meet her some other time 
she looks like an honest woman, only different, for her 
dress is white and the reboso with which she covers her 
head is white, too. Indeed, anybody might speak back 
to her then and offer to help her to find her children, but 
whoever does speak to her drops dead. Yes, indeed, sir, 
only one man, Diego Boula, who years afterward died in 
his bed, was the only one who ever answered her and 
lived. Diego, you must know, was a loco, a fool, and he 
met her one night when he was crossing the Plazuela 
San Pablo. She asked him what he did with Rita and 
Anita. And he looked stupid at her and said he wanted 
something to eat, for he was always hungry, this Diego. 
Then she took a good look at him and then threw back 
her white reboso and Diego saw a wormy, grinning skull, 
and blue little balls of fire for eyes. Then she brought 
her skull r^ear to his face and opened her fleshless jaws 
and blew into Diego's face a breath so icy cold that he 
dropped down like a dead man. But, senor, a fooPs luck 
saved him and when he was found in the morning, he 



112 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

was recovering. It is said that this ice cold breath of 
hers, freezes into death who ever feels it. Then afTer 
the person falls dead, she rushes onward again, shriek- 
ing for her lost ones, but the one who speaks to her is 
found the next morning dead, and on his face and in his 
wide open eyes there is a look of awful horror. 

Did I ever meet her? God forbid, but I heard her 
shrieks and wailings and the patter of her feet, as she 
ran, on the cobblestones of the Calle de San Esteban." 

As we drew near to the inland village where I in- 
tended to put up for the night the country bore all the 
appearance of having lately been swept by a tornado of 
wind and rain. A swirling mass of water must have 
rioted over the lowlands, for rocks, trees and bowlders 
lay everywhere in confusion and encumbered the roads. 
Many of the fruit trees were uprooted, houses unroofed 
and outbuildings dismantled. Sure enough when we en- 
tered the town it bore all the marks of cyclonic wrath. 
With difficulty we obtained accommodations for the 
night. When I strolled out early next morning to take a 
look at the town and the damage done by the storm, the 
entire population apparently, men, women and children 
were gathered around their church which had been blown 
down by the cyclone. Some were chipping stones, some 
carrying lime, some mixing mortar, some pulling down 
the shaken walls, some splitting sliingles for the roof, 
some strengthening the sprung beams. Everybody was 
busy about the church and, seemingly, not one was en- 
gaged about any of the houses. A sudden shower drove 
me into a protected part of the building for shelter, and 
I got into conversation with a man who turned out to bfe 
the priest, but not being quite as good a bricklayer as 
he was a theologian, he was then serving as hodman to 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 113 

his own clerk, or sexton, the mason of the village. Not 
knowing at the time that I was addressing the cura or 
parish priest, I asked him how all these people were 
paid. 

''Paid?" said the reverend hodman, ''why, they a]' 
belong to this parish." 

''Yes," I replied, "but how are they paid? — I mean," 
continued I, hesitating and turning over in my mind 
what was Spanish for church rates or dues, "how do you 
raise the money to pay all these people their day's 
wages ? ' ' 

The hodcarrier laughed. "Why," he spoke back, and 
I now from his face and accent began to suspect he was 
somebody, "why, you do not pay people for doing their 
own work. It is the house of God, their own church 
which they are repairing. It is mine, it's theirs, it is their 
children's. Until the church is ready we have no place to 
assemble to pray to God and publicly to offer up to him 
the holy sacrifice. There will be no work done by us till 
we have repaired God's temple, our own church." Who 
was it who wrote : "0, for the touch of a vanished hand, 
and the sound of the voice that is still. ' ' And for the 
simple piety and child-like faith of the days of old. In 
the presence of this example of rugged faith and zeal 
for the house of God on the part of this priest and his 
flock I called back to my mind the ages of faith and the 
sublime heroism and devotion of the early Christians. 
Beyond a doubt the church was theirs. Not a day did 
these simple people go to their work till they had assisted 
at the mass offered up by the priest who was now, as a 
hodman, helping in the rebuilding of their temple. Not a 
time did any of them start out on a long journey without 
first receiving holy communion from the hands of this 



] 14 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

man of God. Yes, and many a time, too, when sickness 
entered the home or when trouble came to some one of 
the family, might you see an anxious wife or trembling 
mother kneeling before the tabernacle, who had stolen 
away from the noise and distractions of home, and had 
come unto the altar of God to pray for herself and her 
loved ones. To these honest souls their church was as 
necessary as their sleeping rooms or their kitchens and 
was used as much. When it was blown down they felt 
the want of it as much as they did that of their own 
houses. The church was always open and they came and 
went when and as often as they liked. Surely it was 
their church and they made good use of it, 

I remember well the day I came down from the Sier- 
etta mountains and was passing on foot through the little 
city of Aguas Coloradas, the church of which was well 
worth seeing. I had my camera and field glasses hang- 
ing from my shoulders, some few samples in a canvas 
bag, was wearing a suit of rough khaki and was not alto- 
gether the figure for the inside of a church. 

''What shall I do with these things?" I said to my 
guide. 

"Put them down here on the church steps," said he. 

Now these church steps projected into the market 
place, which at that time was full of all sorts of rough- 
looking people. I laughed and said, 'T had much rather 
not put such a temptation in the way of Mexican hon- 
esty. ' ' 

"Well," answered my guide, "there is no doubt that 
the people of Aguas Coloradas are the greatest rogues 
unhung" (he belonged himself to a neighboring parish, 
and like all members of little communities was narrow 
enough to be jealous of his neighbor's prosperity), 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 115 

''your excellency is perfectly right, they are the great- 
est rogues unhung. But they are not so bad as to steal 
from God." I put my things on the steps and after the 
lapse of an hour I found them, and along with them some 
eight or ten baskets of fruit and vegetables, which the 
market people had left there while they went in to say 
their prayers, all of which though looking very tempting, 
though entirely unguarded, except by the unseen pres- 
ence of God, were as safe as if they had been under lock 
and key. Is there a church in any city of America whose 
sanctity would protect day and night articles left ex- 
posed before its door? If not, why not! 

WONDERFUL CRUCIFIX, 

Very much to my surprise I discovered in the sacristy 
of the quaint little church of this primitive village a du- 
plicate of Julian Garces' famous copy on glass of "The 
Dead Christ. ' ' Garces painting from the original hangs 
in the baptistry of an ancient church on the Calle San 
Pablo, Mexico City, and is never exhibited to visitors 
save on request. It is a wonderful painting on glass, 
thrilling in its awful realism and impossible, once seen, 
ever to be forgotten. 

It was copied many years ago by the Dominican 
painter, Julian Garces, from the original painting on 
wood, carried to Spain, when the religious orders were 
suppressed by the Mexican government in 1829. This 
wonderful painting on wood is now preserved in the con- 
vent of the discalced Order of St. Francis, Bilboa, Spain. 
It is known as the crucifix of the devil, and intimately 
associated with it is a curious and touching legend. 

Early in the seventeenth century Mexico City was the 
Paris of the Latin-American world. It possessed great 



116 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

wealth, for the mines of Mexico were literally pouring 
out silver. Its reputation for gaiety, for the beauty and 
vivacity of its senoritas, for its variety of amusements 
and for the splendor of its climate, attracted to its hos- 
pitable clubs many of the rollicking and adventurous 
youth of Spain. Among them was a young man of noble 
birth, who at once flung himself into the whirlpool of 
dissipation that eddied in the flowing river of fashion- 
able amusements. In a few years he wasted his patri- 
mony in a fast life and in wild debauchery. Utterly 
ruined in pocket and in credit, he determined to end it all 
in suicide. He was returning from the Spanish casino, 
after losing heavily at a game of chance, when the 
thought of self-destruction possessed him. He was re- 
volving in his mind the easiest way leading from earth- - 
to where — **To hell!" he muttered. Then he entered 
upon another line of thought. He had read and heard of 
men in desperate circumstances asking and receiving 
help from the devil. 

''I'll be damned anyhow," he argued with himself, 
' ' and I may as well have a few more years on earth be- 
fore going down into the pit." Much to his surprise, 
when he entered his chambers he found them lighted up 
and a stranger awaiting him. The man who rose to greet 
him was in simple citizen's dress, and uncommonly like 
one of those curb brokers who are so numerous in our 
own day. "I understand, sir," said the stranger, "that 
you wish my services. ' ' 

''Who are you?" asked the Spaniard. 

"I am the party who, many hundreds of years ago, 
said to the founder of your religion: "All these will I 
give thee, if, falling down, thou wilt adore me. ' ' 

"The Devil?" 



BY PATH AND TBAIL. 117 

"The same, at your service." 

A bargain was quickly made. In exchange for his soul, 
by a document to be duly signed and delivered, the prodi- 
gal was to receive more money than was necessary to re- 
establish his fortune; and to enjoy until the dissolution 
of his natural body, all that he desired, all that earth 
could offer him; sensual delight, influence, a distin- 
guished career in society, the intoxication of power, in 
short all that gold could purchase and secure. However, 
the Spanird was no fool, and before he attached his sig- 
nature to the fatal contract, he wished to be satisfied 
that he was face to face with the Master of Hell, the 
Eebel Lucifer. *' Before I sign this parchment, may I 
ask you a few questions?" 

"Certainly," replied Satan. 

"Well, since you are Lucifer, how long have you dealt 
with the children of Adam ? ' ' 

' ' Since that day I laughed at God, when in the Garden 
of Eden, I seduced Eve." 

' ' Then you must have met in the waning years of His 
mortal life Him whom men style Christ?" 

"I followed Him about for three years, and for the 
defeats He inflicted on my friends and for the insults He 
offered to me I gave Him blow for blow. ' ' 

"Were you present when He hung on the Cross of Cal- 
vary, between a murderer and a thief, and did you wit- 
ness his awful agony and ignominious death?" 

"I was, of all the crowd that mocked Him and laughed 
at Him when He hung on the wood, the most pleased wit- 
ness. Why, I inspired the fools who nailed Him to the 
wood. It was I who tempted Judas, the Iscariot, to be- 
tray Him ; I inspired the Hebrew priests to insult Him, 
another to spit upon Him, and my friend Pilate, who now 
occupies a conspicuous place in my kingdom, to scourge 



118 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

Him, and fling Him to the mob. Why, only for me, the 
fools would not have whipped Him, pressed the crown on 
His head, put a reed in His hand for a scepter and a scar- 
let cloak on his bleeding shoulders and, amid laughter 
and insult, made a mock king of Him. 

"You remember His features, the expression on His 
face when He hung on the cross and cried aloud to His 
Father : ' ' My God, My God, hast Thou abandoned me ? " 
questioned the Spaniard. 

''As if His vile death happened yesterday. 

"Could you and will you paint for me the face, and 
the expression on the face as you saw them immediately 
before He said: 'All is consummated,' and when dark- 
ness was falling on Calvary and Jerusalem?" 

"I can and will." 

"Well, then, do I beseech you, before I sign our com- 
pact. Here is the brush and here the palette. ' ' 

Lucifer took the brush and paints, and when in a few 
moments he handed them back the face of Jesus Christ 
stood out upon an ebony background. It was a face full 
of tenderness, of infinite pathos, of unspeakable pity, of 
boundless compassion; but on it, deeply graven in the 
flesh, were lines of awful suffering, the seamings of sor- 
row and sustained agony. The Spaniard, as he gazed 
upon the "Santo Eostro," the Divine Face, trembled as 
trembles the man to whom the dead speaks. The eyes of 
the Holy Face looked into his own; he was standing be- 
fore a Christ that was not yet dead, but whose body lay 
limp, and from which the blood was pouring from a gash 
in the side and trickling from wounds in the head and 
hands. From out the closing lids, the eyes, glazed with 
approaching death, looked down upon him in sorrow and 
infinite pity. The face and figure were so heart-rending 



BY PATH AND TRAIL, 119 

in their terrible realism, the look of the agonized Cruci- 
fied so appealing and so full of love that tears of sym- 
pathy welled from the eyes of the libertine. Then before, 
and hiding the face of the Christ, he saw the face of his 
mother, and the eyes that looked their last upon him when 
she lay upon her bed of death in their home in Madrid. 
Rushing past his tempter, the young Castilian flung him- 
self at the feet of the Christ and cried aloud: "Jesus, 
son of David, have mercy on me." When, sobbing and 
broken-hearted, he rose erect he was alone with the dead 
Christ and the unsigned compact. 

JULIAN GARCES' COPY. 

In Garces' painting on glass, the dying Christ stands 
out in full relief with no perspective. Behind the cross 
all is darkness save alone a thread of lightning, snake- 
like and forked. Over Calvary the sky is lurid and of a 
dull red, whose fiery hue in portentous, lugubrious and 
awe-inspiring. The body of the dying Savior, the little 
board above the cross, with its prophetic inscription: 
"Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews;" and parts of the 
cross which the Divine Body did not cover, alone occupy 
space. Beyond and around them nothing, only the black- 
ness of ebon darkness. Save the ribbon of snake-like 
lightning coming out of and piercing the impenetrable 
darkness, there is nothing; not a ray of light anywhere, 
no mark of a horizon, naught but the body of the Man- 
God, the gibbet and — night, moonless and starless. But 
the isolation of the Figure on the lone Cross, the pitiable 
solitude encompassing the Crucified, the blood oozing 
from the frayed wound and trickling down the pallid 
flesh, and the Divine Face from which expression, anima- 
tion and life itself are lingeringly departing, appeal to 



120 BY PATH AND TEAIL. 

the heart and the imagination, and we are overwhelmed 
with pity and sympathy. 

If we are familiar with the Holy Scriptures we hear 
the pathetic cry of Isais: "There is no beauty in Him 
now, nor comeliness * * despised, * * * ^ man 
of sorrows. * * * jjis look was as it were hidden 
from us. 

"He was led as a sheep to the slaughter and He did 
not open His mouth." 

' ' I have given my body to the scourgers, and my cheeks 
to the strikers; I have not turned away my face from 
them that rebuked me, and spat upon me." We call up 
the prophetic words of the inspired writer of the Psalms. 

"I am poured out like' water: they have dug my hands 
and feet. ' ' 

"They gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they 
gave me vinegar to drink : My God, My God, hast thou 
forsaken me?" We listen to Jeremias speaking with the 
voice of the Victim of Divine Love sacrificed before our 
very eyes: "My tabernacle is laid waste, all my cords 
are broken; my children have abandoned me, and they 
are not : there is none to stretch forth my tent any more : 
I am left alone. ' ' 

While we stand with eyes fastened on the solitary and 
bleeding Figure, we see Him die. He is dead ! From His 
hands, from His head fallen away from the dead muscles 
and resting on the naked breast, from the gaping wound 
made by the soldier's lance, the blood no longer flows. 
The body is bloodless, but between the muscles, through 
the delicate and transparent skin, one may count the 
bones of the Crucified, one might number the pulsations 
of the heart before it ceased to beat. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE PRADERA AND GUANO BEDS. 

From my first chapter on Lower California I may 
have left the impression on the minds of my readers 
that the entire peninsula is a waste of desolation or th'at 
i\n anathema of sterility had withered the whole country. 
This would not be the truth. As we near the southwest- 
em coast the land struggles to shed more vegetation and 
we begin to experience a mild, soft and almost langurous 
air. The palo verde, the mesquite, the giant sahuaros 
and many varieties of the cacti gradually appear. Along 
the eastern coast the land is yet more covered with 
mesquite trees, and malma and bunch grass above which 
looms the columnar pithahaya. The mesas or table lands 
of sand have here and there groo and gramma grasses. 
Then, as we climb the mountains we meet scrub oak and 
iiill juniper, till at an elevation of 6,000 feet we enter 
the pine lands. Owing to the peculiarity of the river 
beds which run through loose quarternary deposits the 
water which flows down the mountains during the rainy 
seasons disappears in the porous earth, seeks under- 
ground channels, and after following its subterranean 
course for many miles, is lost entirely or comes again 
to the surface where the older formation rises or is 
crossed by a dyke forming a natural dam. 

By reason of the clearness of the atmosphere and the 
absence of all foreign substances in the air distances are 
deceptive and appearances delusive. Small objects, such 
as tlie outlines of an isolated mound, the face of a pro- 
jecting rock or a browsing steer loom large and stand 



122 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

out sharp and well defined. At a distance of fifteen 
miles foothills seem but one or two miles off. From the 
top of Para hill, fifty miles inland, I have seen the pano- 
rama of the shores and bay, the town of La Paz, the hills 
and valleys, all clearly outlined. The escarpment of the 
San Juan mountains, 100 mies to the north of the hill 
on which I was standing, seemed but twenty miles away, 
and from the highest peak of the Cerita range, on a fine, 
clear day7"*they tell me, a circular panorama 350 miles 
in diameter, inclosing the most varied scenes of tower- 
ing mountains, sunken deserts of yellow, shifting sands, 
patches of cultivated land and rolling ocean, is plainly 
visible. This diaphanous condition of the atmosphere 
is so deceptive that a stranger will sometimes begin a 
walk for a neighboring hill, thinking it only a few miles 
off, when in reality it is twenty miles away. 

In certain stretches of this wonderful land currents of 
air of widely different temperature, and hydrometric 
layers of atmosphere lying one over the other produce 
an electric condition like what we are told occurs on the 
high Peruvian Andes. Owing to extreme drjmess the 
ground is a very poor conductor, so that the superabund- 
ance of electricity in the air corrodes metallic imple- 
ments or objects exposed and left upon the ground for 
any length of time. At times when desert storms sweep 
across the face of the land the air is so abundantly 
charged with electricity that the hair of the head will 
stand out like that of a boy on an insulating stool. ThQ 
hair on horses' tails and manes become like the bristles 
on a brush, but seemingly no annoying effects follow. 
There are regions of this extraordinary land where rheu- 
matism is unknown. Leather articles, books and goods 
which mildew in other coast lands, may here remain ex- 



BY PATH AND TEAIL. 123 

posed night and day without injury, showing the harm- 
less character of the climate, in striking contrast with 
that of the Madeira and Canary Island where leather 
molds, salts deliquice, unprotected metal rusts, botani- 
cal specimens spoil and musical instruments cannot be 
kep'u in tune. Mulberry trees in Italy and Southern 
France require constant care and vigilance, but here, 
once planted, they demand no further attention. There 
are here stretches of land where in the dry, hot and rari- 
fied air meats, eggs, fish and fowl remain untainted for 
days. 

Back of the ancient and historic town of Loretto — 
with which I will deal in another place — there is a valley 
of contradiction, full of fascination to the eye to-day, and 
to-morrow a land of desolation and of horror. It is 
called ''La Pradera Honda," the deep meadow, from its 
marvelous wealth and coloring of vegetation at certain 
seasons and times. 

The Pradera reposes between two menacing ranges of 
barren mountains which yet retain the ancient marks 
left by the waters when the desert was an inland lake. 
When I saw ''La Pradera" a few days ago it was under 
a shroud of sand, and of ashes that the angry volcanoes 
of the mountains had, long ago, vomited upon it. 

Turning to my Mexican companion and extending my 
hand toward the Prada, I ask'ed: "Is there any life 
there?" "Si, senor," he answered, "there is life there, 
but it is life that is death to you and me. You see these 
intermittent and miniature forests of bisnoga and cienga 
cacti? They shade and protect from the fierce rays of 
a burning sun the deadly rattlesnake, the horned snake 
that strikes to kill, the kangaroo rat, the tarantula, the 



124 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

cEawalla, the white scorpion, the arena centipede, lizards 
and poisonous spiders." 

The sun beat down upon the deadly silence, upon the 
dull gray floor of the desert where the bunched blades of 
the yucca bristled stiff in the hot, sandy waste. But 
before coming here I had heard of another and more 
wonderful life than the reptile existence dwelt upon by 
my friend. There are times when torrential storms of 
rain rage fiercely among the mountains bordering this 
arid land or a drifting cloud loaded with water strikes a 
towering peak. When these things happen, rivers of 
water flow madly down the furrows worn in the face of 
the great hills, and, hitting the desert, separate into 
sheets of liquid refreshment which give life and beauty 
to desolation and aridity. They come, says the inspired 
writer, by the command of God, "to satisfy the desolate 
and waste ground and to cause the seed in the parched 
earth to spring forth." Then the ashen white waste is 
all aglow with myriad blossoms, and the desert sands 
are covered with a most beautiful carpet of wonderful 
flowers for many of which the science of botany has no 
name. 

Of all these plants that bloom in this vale of Hinom, 
perhaps, the most pleasing to the eye are the flowers of 
the cacti, and the rapidity with which their dry and ap- 
parently dead stalks throw out beautiful blossoms after 
their roots are watered, is one of the marvels of the des- 
ert. The cacti of La Pradera are an annual manifesta- 
tion of the realism of death and resurrection and, as the 
plants come into fullest bloom in early spring, this desert 
at the time of Easter is one vast circular meadow where 
the rarest and most beautiful flowers have risen from 
their graves as if to glorify the resurrection of their 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 125 

Lord and Master. The largest and most wonderful 
flower of them all grows, I am told, on an ugly, short, 
misshapen cactus which, for eleven months of the year 
is to all outward seeming, dead, but when its roots are 
watered, blooms with supremely delicate and waxy pet- 
als. There is another cactus, a low creeping plant of 
round trunk and pointed stem, repellent as a snake, and 
ugly to look upon which, at about the time of the vernal 
equinox, is covered wth large pink flowers, beautiful as 
orchids and fragrant as the fairest rose in my lady's 
garden. Then by the sides, and between the Mexican 
agaves and the white plumed yuccas with trembling serri- 
ated leaves, are scattered in luxuriant prodigality co- 
lumbines, phloxes, verbenas and as many as twenty or 
thirty varieties of flowering plants for which my limited 
knowledge of botany supplies no names. Unfortunately, 
for the present, the names of many of these rare species 
are not known even to our professional botanists, and 
the common varieties of those which are classified, and 
found in other parts of California bear no such fascinat- 
ing and gorgeous array of flowers as those indigenous to 
the "Pradera" desert. 

The Islands of St. George off the east coast of the 
Peninsula of California are a singular group of squeezed 
or lifted rocks on which the dew never settles and where 
rain never falls for years. These are the famous '^ rook- 
ery islands" where, for uncounted years, enormous num- 
bers of birds of the sea and of the land have built theii^ 
nests, deposited their eggs and hatched their young. By 
some mysterious law of instinct and selection the birds, 
from the beginning, alloted small islands and sections on 
the larger islands to the different species of the feather- 
ed race, so that the sea birds, like the frigate pelicans, 



126 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

tlie gulls, petrels and the like have their own allotments 
and the land birds theirs, and between them there is no 
friction or intrusion on each others' premises. With 
the first sign of dawn they begin the flight for their feed- 
ing grounds, and for hours the heavens are intermittent- 
ly obscured by the countless members of this aerial host. 
They fly in battalions, or in orderly detachments, reach 
the feeding grounds on land or water fifty or a hundred 
miles away and at once scatter and separate in search of 
food. An hour before twilight, and timing their distance, 
they rise again, converge to an aerial center and wing 
for home. As the birds approach the rookeries they 
announce their coming by cries, calls or shrieks and are 
answered by those on the nests or by the young but lately 
hatched. The cry of the birds is heard far out at sea, 
and to the ship that sees no land, the effect is weird and 
ghastly, if not ghostly. The decomposing bodies of dead 
birds, of feathers, bones, flesh and entrails, the disinte- 
gration of shells and the droppings from millions of 
birds for thousands of years have superimposed upon 
the primitive surface of the islands a deposit of great 
commercial value, and in places eighty feet deep. This 
deposit, saturated with ammonia and phosphorus, is 
called guano and, wherever found, is dug out, chiefly by 
Chinese coolies, loaded on ships and freighted to the sea 
ports of Europe, where it is bagged or barreled and sold 
to gardeners and farmers for fertilizing their lands. On 
islands like Rotunda off Antigua, where the rock is por- 
ous and friable, and on which rain occasionally falls, the 
guano liquefies, percolates through the porous stone and 
decomposes the rocks into what is known as mineral 
phosphates. 



CHAPTER XV. 

OKIGIISr OF THE PIOUS FUND. 

Felicien Pascal, the French publicist, devotes an ar- 
ticle in Le Monde Modern, to an explanation of the mis- 
sionary success of the Society of Jesus, the members of 
which are known to us as Jesuits. It is rather excep- 
tional for a French freethinker to write calmly and dis- 
passionately of a religious association whose creed and 
manner of life are in direct antithesis to his own. Much 
has been written at various periods in their history of 
the ''secrets" of the Jesuits; but, asserts Mr. Pascal, 
' ' the great secret of their strength is their sublime disci- 
pline. To this discipline the Jesuits have always owed 
their marvelous power and their acceptabilty as a chosen 
body of highly trained specialists among the ruling 
classes of Europe and in the savage wilds of Africa and 
America. ' ' 

Mr. Pascal is experimenting with a social and histori- 
cal fact and is disposed to deal honestly and dispassion- 
ately with its origin. Having no faith in the super- 
natural, it was not to be expected that the French sociol- 
ogist would look beyond the human and the natural for 
the solution of a great problem. Unquestionably he is 
right as far as he goes or his negations will permit him 
to go. St. Paul, the prototype of all missionaries, writ- 
ing to the Corinthians, recounts for their edification his 
own sufferings and sorrows, his ''perils in the wilder- 
ness, in labor and painfulness, in watchings often, in 
hunger and thirst, in many fastings, in cold and naked- 
ness." Further on, this extraordinary man, "called to 



128 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

be an apostle out of due time," tells us why, according 
to men of the world, he was a fool. "I take pleasure in 
my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecu- 
tion, in distresses — ^for Christ's sake." On another oc- 
casion when writing to the Christians at Rome, he says 
that to men of the type of Mr. Pascal, the heroism of 
martyrs, confessors and missionaries, is foolishness; 
that it is impossible for the natural or worldly man to 
understand the things that are of the kingdom of God. 

And now, let me. record for the edification of my read- 
ers, the deeds of fraternal love and self-denial wrought 
among the savage tribes of this unhospitable land centu- 
ries ago by men whose heroism and success, Mr. Pascal 
and men like him try to explain by human discipline and 
human organization. In an earlier chapter I dwelt pass- 
ingly on the attempt of the Spaniard Otondo to establish 
a settlement on the shores of the Bay of La Paz. For 
eighteen months the Spanish colonists tilled and coaxed 
a sandy soil and they reaped cactus, sage brush and dis- 
appointment. During these eighteen months not one 
drop of rain fell upon the soil, now dry and parched as 
the tongue of Dives. Otondo, in disgust, broke up the 
settlement, called off his men and sailed away for Man- 
zanillo. 

With Otondo 's colonists, when they left Chalca, 
Sinoloa, went three Jesuit priests, one as cartographist 
to the expedition, and the two others as missionaries to 
the natives. They now pleaded to be permitted to re- 
main with the tribes, for already they were mastering 
the language and dialects and had under instruction 
nearly four hundred adults and children. Father Copart 
had already begun the composition of a ''doctrina" or 
short catechism in the native dialects. He experienced 



BY PATH AND TEAIL. 129 

much trouble, he tells us in a letter written to a clerical 
friend, in finding words and idioms to explain the doc- 
trines of Christianity, but with the help of the children 
he got on fairly well. The fathers asked to be left with 
the tribes, but Otondo declared that he could not take 
upon himself the responsibility of leaving a solitary 
European on the accursed shore and insisted on the 
priests returning to Mexico with him. 

Thus ended the first attempt to found a settlement 
in Lower California. What a singular fatality fol- 
lowed in the wakes of nearly all the first settlements 
on the coasts of North America. Raleigh's planta- 
tion in Virginia was abandoned after four years of dis- 
appointment and heart-breakings, though Grenville, 
the partner of Raleigh, said the land was "the goodliest 
soil under the cope of heaven." The first settlement in 
New England was even shorter lived and Goswald and 
Popham brought back their colonists from Maine, as did 
Otondo from California. The story of the hardships and 
sufferings from cold and scurvy of the first French set- 
tlers on the St. Charles is paralleled by the history of 
Vizcaino's voyage and landing in the Bay of Monterey. 

Twenty years afterOtondo's failure England called off 
its first contingent of settlers from Tangiers. La Salle, 
the explorer, and one of the grandest men that ever trod 
the American continent, was shot by his own men and 
his dream of colonization ended. The pioneer Scotch 
colony at Darien failed absolutely, as did Selkirk's settle- 
ment in the Canadian Northwest one hundred years ago. 

The colonization of Lower California, such as it was 
and is, was finally effected mainly through the persistent 
efforts and untiring zeal of two Jesuit priests, Eusebio 
Kino and Gian-Maria Salvatierra. Some day the lives 



130 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

of these heroic and saintly men will be written and will 
give added dignity and importance to the history of 
Christian missions on the continent of America. 

Once having begun the conversion of a savage or bar- 
barous people, the Jesuit missionaries never voluntarily 
retire from the field. It was at no time, and is not now, a 
part of the policy of the constitution of the order to des- 
pair of converting a people who spurned their friendly 
advances or with bloody hands welcomed them to hospit- 
able graves. The Society of Jesus is not, by any means, 
the greatest missionary body to which the Catholic 
church has given birth. Any one familiar with Montal- 
ambert 's great history, ^ ' The Monks of the West, ' ' must 
concede that the church has been the fruitful mother of 
heroic and zealous missionary orders. Considering the 
duration of its existence, it must, however, be admitted 
that the Society of Jesus is on a plane of successful 
equality with any organization established since apos- 
tolic times for the conversion and civilization of pagan 
nations and savage tribes. It is a hopeful augury for 
the establishment and permanency of a more friendly 
feeling among us all that, since Parkman gave us his 
''Jesuits in North America," the hostility to the great 
order among English speaking races is, like an unpleas- 
ant odor, gradually evaporating. 

After reading Otondo's ''Eeport" of the failure of 
the California colony, the horrible degradation of the 
tribes and the pitiful sterility of the land, the Spanish 
viceroy to Mexico advised the home government to have 
nothing more to do with the accursed country. The 
King of Spain followed the recommendation of his rep- 
resentative, and Lower California was abandoned to its 
sagebrush, scorpions, tarantulas and naked savages. 



BY PATH AND TEAIL. 131 

Despairing of obtaining any help or even encourage- 
ment from the Spanish or Mexican officials, Father Salva- 
tierra now appealed to the zeal and Christian charity of 
the Spainards in Mexico to assist him in his effort to re- 
open the mission to the Digger Indians. Father Eusibio 
Kino, who was with the Otondo expedition, and Father 
Juan Ugarte flung themselves into the good work and 
with speech and pen pleaded for the California tribes. 
It was impossible to resist the call of these men; the 
piety of their daily lives, the sincerity of their motives, 
their scholarship, eloquence and heroism awoke enthu- 
siasm and touched generous, though until now, indiffer- 
ent hearts. Subscriptions began to move. From far 
away Queretaro, Padre Cabellero, a priest who inherited 
parental wealth, sent $10,000. The "Congregation of 
Our Lady of Sorrows," a confraternity of holy women, 
promised a yearly sum of $500; Count de Miravalles 
subscribed $1,000 ; Pedro Sierrepe of Acapulco gave the 
fathers a lancha or long boat and offered the loan of his 
ship for a transport, and from Mexico City and towns in 
the vice royal provinces came liberal contributions. 

These generous donations Father Salvatierra formed 
into a fund, or, as we would say to-day, capitalized for 
the evangelization of the California Indians and the sup- 
port of the California missions. Thus began the famous 
''Fondo Piadoso de California," of which we have heard 
so much and which involved in its distribution and par- 
tial settlement two religious orders and three civilized 
nations, and for which, to quiet a claim against it, the 
government of the United States lately paid the arch- 
bishop of San Francisco three hundred and eighty-five 
thousand dollars. 

On the 13th of July, 1697, the ship of Pedro Sierrepe 



132 BY PATH AND TEAIL. 

loaded with supplies for the infant mission sailed out of 
the harbor of Acapulco, on the Pacific coast, and pass- 
ing through the straits of Magellan, finally, after two 
months of ocean travel, rounded Cape San Lucas and 
anchored in the Yaqui bay. Gulf of Cortes, now the Gulf 
of California. Father Salvatierra, who had come over- 
land to Sonora, was, with the illustrious Kino, giving a 
mission to the Yaquis when he was informed of the ar- 
rival of the ship. Kino made preparations to accom-- 
pany him to Lower California when the Governor of 
Sonora intervened. 

The provinces of Sinoloa and Sonora were at this 
particular time threatened with an Indian uprising, the 
governor refused to let Kino leave him, contending 
that the influence of the priest in controlling the rest- 
less Yaquis and Mayos was greater than the pres- 
ence of a thousand soldiers. So Salvatierra sailed 
alone out of the Yaqui bay and in October landed in 
Lower California, twenty miles north of the site chosen 
by Otondo for his unfortunate colony. Like that heroic 
Canadian missionary, Breboeuf, Salvatierra, when he 
landed, knelt upon the beach and placing the country 
under the protection of the Blessed Virgin, invoked the 
help of God in the work he was abojit to undertake. Then 
rising he exclaimed aloud, '^hic requiescmn, quoniam 
elegi earn" — I will remain here, for I myself have cho- 
sen it. After the landing of the baggage, the provisions 
and a few domestic animals the party rested for the 
night. 

Here is the roster of the first settlement and prac- 
tically the first Christian mission which led to the civili- 
zation of the tribes and the exploration of all California. 
A Portuguese pick and shovel man called Lorenzo, three 
Christianized Mexican Indians, a Peruvian mulatto, a 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 133 

Mexican half-caste from Guadalajara, one Sicilian and 
one Maltese, sailors who had served in a Philippine 
galleon and one Jesuit priest, Father Salvatierra. In the 
history of early colonization, in any jpart of the world, 
there is no page recording anything like this or any 
enterprise composed of such seemingly hopeless ma- 
terial. And yet under the masterful mind of the mis- 
sionary, with faith, piety and tact these human frag- 
ments were welded into a compact body that conquered 
a stubborn soil and conciliated tribal opposition. 

The Maltees sailor was also an ex-gunner and to him 
fell the honor of mounting the miserable little cannon 
brought from Acapulco to protect the mission if attack- 
ed by the natives. The Mexican Indians, under the eye 
of Lorenzo, were to till a few acres of ground, look after 
the few cattle, sheep and goats brought in the ship, and 
in a pinch, do some fighting. After throwing up a tem- 
porary chapel and staking off the ground, they began 
the building of a rough stone wall around the camp and 
mission to guard men and animals against the hostility 
or covetousness of the savages. The Indians gathered 
from near and far, and looked on stolidly, making no 
demonstrations of friendship or dislike. 

I already mentioned that Father Copart of Otondo's 
expedition had partially compiled a catechism of the 
Cochimis or "Digger Indian" language. Salvatierra 
from this unfinished abridgement gained some knowledge 
of the savage tongue. He began, as did the Jesuits with 
the Wyandottes, by appealing to their affections through 
their wretched and always half -starved stomachs. After 
filling them wth cornmeal porridge, he addressed them 
in Copart 's gutterals, tried to teach them a few Spanish 
words, and after three months baptized his first convert 



134 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

— a cancer victim — to whom Father Copart had given 
some instruction eleven years before. To the infant vil- 
lage and mission he gave the name of Loretto the same 
name which Father Chaumonont had bestowed on the 
little bourg outside of Quebec, where he sheltered, and 
where vet dwell the last of the Hurons. 



CHAPTEE XVI. 

THE REPOSE OF THE GRAVE. 

1 well remember the afternoon I arrived — after a ride 
across the mountains of thirty-two miles — at a turn of 
the narrow road and, for the first time, looked down 
upon the quaint and historically fascinating village of 
Loretto, Lower California. 

This is the place. Stand still, my steed, 

Let me review the scene, 
And summon from the shadowy past 

The forms that once had been. 

Eight generations of human life had come into the 
world, lived their uneventful but singular existence, and 
when the time came were laid away with those who had 
preceded them, since first the Spanish missionary bore a 
message from the crucified Christ to the most loathsome 
of men and women that ever walked the earth. Yet they 
could claim, if they but knew it, kinship with God, the 
immutable and eternal, through Him whose message of 
friendship and love the Spanish Ambassador was sent 
to deliver. 

Unless God the Almighty took away their human and 
gave them a brute nature, it was impossible for the 
' ' Digger Indians ' ' or for any human beings to approach 
nearer to the brute's state. 

There existence was a hell of foul licentiousness, of 
nameless lusts, of hunger, thirst, of disease and physical 
suffering, and there was no hope for betterment save in 
annihilation or reconstruction, or rather resurrection. 
The civilized and educated man who entered this barren 



136 BY PATH AND TEAIL. 

desolation of savagery, and devoted his life and his tal- 
ents to the taming and uplifting of these brutalized men 
and women was a fool or a saint. This Father Salva- 
tierra, who first came to live and companion with them, 
was a Jesuit priest, and though terrible things have been 
said and written about the Jesuits, their bitterest ene- 
mies never pilloried them as fools. 

^'When we have delivered our attacks and exhausted 
our ammunition on the Jesuits," writes de Marcillac, 
'^we must, as honorable foes, acknowledge they are, as a 
body, the greatest scholars and most fearless missiona- 
ries known to the world." 

When I entered this curious little Indian and Mexi- 
can village, Loretto, I carried with me a sense of rever- 
ence for the place and of respect for the memory of the 
consecrated men whose sublime heroism stiii iives in the 
tradition of the simple people. The following morning, 
after assisting at the sacrifice of the mass offered up by 
a very dark, half -Indian priest, I entered the unpreten- 
tious but well and cleanly kept graveyard to the rear of 
the church. All over the great Eepublic of Mexico, in 
Chiapas, Yucatan, Tabasco, in the states of Central 
America, wherever I went, I saw many things which I 
thought could be improved, but I must confess that their 
churches were always clean and their graveyards and 
cemeteries well looked after. The Spaniards, like the 
Jesuits, have been given hard knocks, but they were 
never charged with being an unclean people. The Latin 
Americans have inherited cleanliness from the Span- 
iards. 

To me, who was fairly familiar with the humble but 
heroic history of Loretto, with the unspeakable degrada- 
tion of the early tribes and the miracles of rehabilitation 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 137 

wrought among them by the Jesuit and Franciscan fa- 
thers, this consecrated plot of ground was full of con- 
soling memories. Here and there a monument of Todos 
Santos marble lifted itself above a forest of unpreten- 
tious crosses marking the graves of half-castes and In- 
dians, These humble black crosses, with a ribbon of 
white paint bordering the black, bore unpronounceable 
names, the age and the day of the death of the deceased 
in Spanish. Some very few monuments had more elab- 
orate inscriptions, but all, marble and wood, carried the 
Catholic and early Christian "Requiescat in pace" — 
May he or she rest in peace. 

Dominating all in magnitude and impressiveness was 
the great central cross of cedar, the crux sanctorum, in- 
dicating that the enclosed ground was consecrated and 
exclusively reserved for the bodies of those who died in 
miion with the Catholic church and sleep the sleep of 
peace. The transverse bar bore this inscription from the 
Book of Ecclesiastes : 

^ ' Corpora sanctorum in pace sepulta sunt : et nomina 
Eorum vivent in generationem et generationem. " 

(The Bodies of the just are buried in peace and their 
names live from generation to generation.) Further 
down on the cross was a verse from the Psalms : 
''Qui seminant in lacrimis in gaudio metent." 

(Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.) 

A few months before my visit to Loretto, the young 
daughter of the harbor-master — a very charming and 
beautiful girl of seventeen — was drowned in the bay. Her 
body was recovered almost immediately, but for a time 
it was feared her mother would lose her mind. The af- 
fection and sorrow of her family are materialized in one 
of the most chaste and purest shafts of marble I have 



138 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

anywhere looked upon. It is the only monument I have 
ever seen in a Catholic, or indeed in any graveyard, 
carrying a Christian and Pagan inscription. The brother 
of the young girl is a free-thinker, who worshiped his 
sister with the respect and affection of a brother and 
the passion of a lover. He entreated his father to have 
chiseled on his sister's monument, under the "Requies- 
cat in pace," Ximinsez' epitaph on the tomb of Inez. 
Translated it would read: 

Warm southern sun, 

Shine kindly here; 
Warm southern wind, 

Blow gently here; 

Green sod above, 

Lie light, lie light, 
Good-night, dear heart. 

Good-night, good-night. ' ' 

I referred in another place to M. Pascal Felicien 's ex- 
planation of the missionary success of the Jesuits. If, 
like M. Felicien, they had no hope of immortality or ex- 
pectation of a judgment to come, men of the heroic self- 
denial of Salvatiera and the other evangelizers of the 
"Digger Indians" would be to us sublime examples of 
folly, if not of insanity, developed by religious fanati- 
cism. But, perverted ingenuity itself has never brought 
a charge of religious imbecility against the members of 
the great Order, and Eugene Sue but popularized the 
expression of Carrier de Nantes when he wrote: "The 
sons of Loyla are too wise for superstition and too delib- 
erate for fanaticism." 

When, last September, I was on my way to Guamas 
to sail for La Paz, I laid over at Los Angeles expressly 



BY PATH AND TRAIL,. 139 

to call on Charles F. Lummis, the editor of ' ' Out West, ' ' 
and the author of the ''Spanish Pioneers." With the 
possible exception of Rudolfe Bandelier, Mr. Lummis is 
the best informed and most reliable living authorit}^ on 
the tribes of the southwest and the early missions of 
California. In answer to my request for his opinion on 
the manhood and sincerity of the priests who fought the 
wilderness and evangelized the tribes of the Pacific coast, 
Mr. Lummis took from a shelf his "Spanish Pioneers," 
and, placing his finger on a passage, asked me to read it, 
and this is what I read : ' ' Their zeal and their heroism 
were infinite. No desert was too frightful for them, no 
danger too appalling. Alone, unarmed, they traversed 
the most forbidding lands, braved the most deadly sav- 
ages, and left on the minds of the Indians such a proud 
monument as mailed explorers and conquering armies 
never made." 

Before the ''break up" of the Lower California mis- 
sions, caused by political jealousies, disease among the 
tribes and civil wars, the Catholic church had established 
sixteen missions or parishes for the Indians, extending 
from Tia Juana at the north, to Cape Palmas of the 
south. Notice that I mention disease as contributory to 
the reduction of the missions. The passage of a primi- 
tive people from savagery to civilization, is like in its 
effects on human systems, to the influence of an entirely 
new and unaccustomed climate and is generally followed 
by a decrease in numbers during a transition period of 
more or less duration. 

What this transition costs we may estimate by analogy 
from lower organic kingdoms. For instance, spring 
wheat has been changed into winter wheat, but the ex- 
periment entailed a loss of nearly three harvests. 



140 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

Wheat has been forced to accommodate itself to the 
soil and climate of Sierra Leone, but only after an 
enormous loss and years of effort. Cochin China hens 
were introduced into the state of Colombia, South Amer- 
ica, and it was twenty years before they were acclima- 
tized. So that ipractically twenty generations perished 
before the few which survived chickenhood could adapt 
themselves to conditions and increase in numbers. Some- 
thing analogous happens when members of the human 
family try to conform to altered conditions or enter upon 
a period of transition. It may end in complete disajp- 
pearance as in the case of the Tasmanians and Maoris, 
or be followed by a revival in vitality under new condi- 
tions as among the Mexicans and Filipinos. When the 
missionary priests entered California they met a de- 
composing race, whose excesses and prolonged physical 
Buffering from exposure and frequent starvation had re- 
duced them to degeneracy. Their extinction in their wild 
and brutalized state was sure to occur in, ethnologically, 
a very short time. No doubt the restraints of civiliza- 
tion and the new conditions to which they were asked to 
conform hastened the inevitable. 

There is left to-day out of a population computed in 
1698 to be six thousand, a scattered remnant of, perhaps, 
fifteen hundred. Before the expulsionof the fathers and 
the consequent abandonment of the missions, almost the 
entire peninsula was redeemed and its population Chris- 
tianized and civilized. To-day the unorganized remnant 
roam the hills of Khada-Khama retaining a few Chris- 
tian practices wrapt up in the rags of pagan supersti- 
tion. When they disappear forever, there will be no 
Cooper to perpetuate their memory, or write a romance 
on "The Last of the Digger Indians." 



CHAPTER XVII. 

SOLDIERS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

It may have occurred to a few of my readers who have 
accompanied me in my wanderings in Northern Mexico 
and Lower California that I have exhibited a rather 
strong partiahty in favor of the Jesuit missionaries and 
by my silence have been unfair to those self-sacrificing 
and zealous members of the Order of St. Francis whose 
undaunted courage on the mission fields of the south- 
west have wrung applause even from the materialist and 
the infidel. I am filled with admiration for the zeal, the 
self-denial, the heroism of the martyrs and missionary 
fathers of the Franciscan order. From their monasteries 
came men whose names are beads of gold worthy to be 
filed on the Rosary of Fame ; men of saintly lives and of 
a transcendent greatness that raises them high above 
the level even of good men and whose sacrifices for 
Christ and humanity challenge the admiration of the 
brave and stagger faith itself. 

If I have omitted to do honor to the members of the 
great order it was because I have already been antici- 
pated by many pens abler than mine. Bancroft, C. F. 
Lummis, Stoddard, Helen Hunt Jackson, Bryan Clinch 
and even poor Bret Harte, in fact, an army of 
writers in books, magazines and newspapers have 
sounded the praises of the Franciscan padres, 
forgetting those saintly men, the Jesuits, who pre- 
ceded the Franciscans on the thorny road and broke the 
trail that afterward carried them to the martyr's grave 



142 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

in the lonely desert. The world, and America in particu- 
lar, will never repay or be able to repay its debt to the 
sons of St. Francis. Indeed, I doubt if Columbus could 
have sailed out of the harbor of Palos on his providen- 
tial mission of discovery had he not enlisted the co-oper- 
ation and influence of Francis of Calabria, confessor to 
Isabella, the queen of Spain, and a member of the Fran- 
ciscan order. 

It was this Spanish Franciscan who appealed to the 
queen to outfit the great Genoese for his daring ex- 
periment. Then the first and most influential pro- 
tector in Spain of the great Admiral was that noble 
and generous Franciscan, Perez de Marchena. Return- 
ing from his first wondrous voyage of discovery, Colum- 
bus obtained from Pope Alexander VI. the privilege of 
selecting missionaries to accompany him on his second 
voyage to America. He chose several Franciscans, in- 
cluding Father Perez, the astronomer, and, arriving af 
Hispaniola, now the Island of Haiti, laid, in conjunc- 
tion with the Franciscans, the first stone of the city of 
San Domingo. Here, too, came, in 1505, the Franciscan 
Father Remi, the King of Scotland's brother, accompa- 
nied by members of his order, who established for the 
conversion of the Indians of Hispaniola and those of the 
Antilles the monastery and headquarters of the Holy 
Cross. It was a Franciscan priest, Jean Bernard Cas- 
tor! de Todi, the astronomer, who offered up the first 
mass on the virgin soil of America. It was also a Fran- 
ciscan priest, Jean Berganon, who first addressed the 
Indians in their own language, and the first missionary 
to die and be buried in America was a member of the 
order, Father Allesandro. 

Diega de Landa, missionary to the Quiches of Ta- 



BY PATH AND TEAIL. 143 

basco, and then Bishop of Yucatan in 1573, wrote the 
History of Yucatan, mastered the mysterious Quiche lan- 
guage and deciphered the hieratic Maya alphabet, was 
a Franciscan. He left us the key to some of the strange 
inscriptions on the monuments of Central America. He 
deciphered the weird characters on the monuments of 
Mayapan and Chichin-Itza ; but for him, his intelligence 
and tireless industry, these gravings would perhaps re- 
main a mystery for all time, like the Egyptian hiero- 
glyphics before the discovery of the Kosetta stone and 
the magnificent research and ingenuity of Champollion. 

Father Pierre Cousin, a French Franciscan, was the 
first priest martyred for Christ in America, and the first 
bishop consecrated for America, 1511, was Garcias de 
Predilla, a Franciscan, who built his cathedral in San 
Domingo. But I am straying far afield and I call back 
my wandering pen to California and the southwest of 
our own country. 

By some mysterious centripetal force almost all the 
wi'itings on the Franciscans of California converged to- 
ward one personality — Father Junipero Serra, a saintly 
priest. Hanging in the reception room of the ancient 
college of San Fernando, Mexico City, is an oil painting 
of the gentle priest executed one hundred and sixty 
years ago. It is a face full of human pathos, of tender- 
ness, of spirituality: this painting and an enlarged da- 
guerreotype in the old Franciscan College of Santa Bar- 
bara, Cal., are all that remain to bring back the form and 
features of one who will for all time fill a conspicuous 
place in California history. Now, good and saintly as 
was Father Junipero, and great and many as are the 
praises sung of him, he was not superior, indeed, judged 
by the standard of the world, he was not the equal of 



144 BY PATH AND TRAIL, 

other Franciscan missionaries of the southwest, whose 
names one seldom ever hears. If the crucifixion of the 
flesh, with its appetites, desires and demands; if great 
suffering voluntarily assumed and patiently borne; if 
fatigue, hunger, thirst and exposure endured uncom- 
plainingly for God and a great cause, and if surrender- 
ing freely life itself, for the uplifting of the outcast and 
the accursed, be the marks of heroic sanctity and heroi<3 
men, then there were greater saints and greater men on 
the desert missions than Junipero Serra. Alone, away 
from the eye and the applause of civilized man, these 
lonely priests in desert and on mountain trod the wine 
press of the fury of insult, mockery and derision. For 
weary years of laborious and unceasing sacrifice, amid 
perils as fearful as ever tried the heart of man, they 
walked the furrow to the martyr's stake, nor cast one 
halting, lingering look behind. Their zeal, their courage, 
their fidelity to duty in the presence of eminent warn- 
ings ; their fortitude under hunger, weariness and exces- 
sive fatigue; their angelic piety and purity of life, and 
their prodigious courage when confronted with torture 
and death, have built on the lonely desert a monument 
to St. Francis and to heroic Catholic charity, a monu- 
ment which will endure till time shall be no more. 

Of these men were Fathers Garces, clubbed to death by 
the Yumas ; Martin de Arbide, burned alive by the Zunis ; 
Juan Diaz, tortured by the Mojaves, and thirty others, 
martyred for the faith. The history of the conversion 
and civilization of the Indians of the California coast, 
Arizona and New Mexico by the Franciscan fathers, 
forms one of the most brilliant chapters in the martyr- 
ology and confessorium of the imperishable Church of 
God. By their patience, tact and kindness, by the un- 



BY PATH AND TKAIL. 145 

blemished cleanliness of their lives, these men of God 
won the confidence and affection of their savage flocks, 
lifted them unto firm earth, Christianized and civilized 
them. From Cape San Lucas to San Diego, and on to 
San Francisco and Los Angeles, all over Arizona, Texas 
and New Mexico, they established missions, built churches 
and taught the tribes to cultivate the land. They gath- 
ered the wandering families into village settlements, 
taught them horticulture and irrigation, and furnished 
them seed and implements of agriculture. They intro- 
duced sheep and cattle, planted vineyards, olive and 
orange groves, and made of these human wrecks a peace- 
ful, industrious and contented people. They did more. 
They taught these men and women of unknown race and 
origin how to break and shoe horses, to carve in wood, 
to mould clay, make and lay tiles, to tan hides and make 
shoes, to sing and play on musical instruments, to make 
wine, candles, clothes, ploughs and hats; they taught 
them the trades of the cooper, the weaver, the saddler, 
the blacksmith, the painter, the carpenter, the baker, the 
miller, the rope maker, the stone cutter, the mason and 
many other civilized occupations. Some of the finer arts 
taught the Indians by the fathers are practiced to-day by 
the members of the tribes, such, for example, as embroi- 
dery in gold and silver thread, fancy basket making, 
moulding and annealing pottery, leather carving, lace 
and drawn work, from the sale of which to curio dealers 
and visitors the Indians draw considerable revenue. 
When, in 1834, a band of Catholic renegades, calling 
themselves the Kepublic of Mexico, broke up the mis- 
sions, seized upon the possessions and revenues of the 
monasteries and Christian pueblos, the Indians were re- 



146 BY PATH AND TBAIL. 

duced to beggary and became human derelicts, outcasts 
and thieves. 

Fray Junipero Serra, founder of the early missions of 
Southern California, was a Franciscan priest, whose un- 
blemished life, angelic piety and habitual tenderness form 
a splendid pedestal for the statue of admiration erected 
to his memory by an appreciative public. It was on the 
morning of July 16, 1769, that Admiral Galvez, an up- 
right man and a brave fighter, together with Father 
Junipero Serra and another Franciscan priest, sailed 
into the bay, landed, and founded what is now known as 
''the old town," a few miles away from the present 
beautiful city of San Diego. They brought with them 
soldiers and laborers, 200 head of cattle, a full supply 
of seeds; seeds of grain, fruit, vegetables and flowers, 
young vines and bulbs, with an abundance of tools and 
implements. 

Thus by the priests of the Catholic church were intro- 
duced into California the horticultural, pastoral and 
agricultural industries, the civilization of the coast tribes 
begun, and the first mission opened. The founding of a 
mission and town in those days of faith was an affair 
of very great importance. When the men, stock and sup- 
plies were landed, and the commander of the expedition 
unfurled the standard of Spain, all heads were bared and 
a salute fired. Then the captain strode to the side of 
the floating flag, raised on high three times, in honor of 
the Holy Trinity, a large cross carrying the Image of 
the Eedeemer. At once the commander, soldiers and 
men went, with uncovered heads, to their knees, bowed 
in worship, and, rising, chanted the ' ' Te Deum, ' ' a hymn 
of praise to God and in His Name, and in the name of 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 147 

the king of Spain, took peaceable possession of the coun- 
try. 

Having chosen a site best adapted for their infant 
city, the priests superintended the erection of an altar 
under the shade of a friendly tree. Father Junipero, 
robed in the vestments he had brought with him from 
his monastery of San Fernando, Mexico City, celebrated 
the first mass offered up in California, July 17, 1769, and 
before intoning the *' Credo," feelingly addressed his 
companions. Far away on the hilltops the naked sav- 
ages, amazed at the sight of the ship and astounded by 
the report of the guns, gazed with awe and wonder on 
the white-robed priest, the plumed commander, the uni- 
formed soldiers, the horses and strangely horned cows 
and sheep. After mass the Spaniards formed in proces- 
sion and moved towards the bay, whose waters the priest 
solemnly blessed, and in honor of St. James of Alcala, 
confirmed the name ''Puerto (Bay) de San Diego de Al- 
cala" bestowed upon the harbor by Vizcaino, November 
12, 1603. 

The following day they began the erection of a fort 
and church, selecting an old Indian rancheria, called 
Cosoy, as best suited for the site of a Christian pueblo. 

The ruins of the church and fort are here to-day; two 
stately palms, planted by the fathers, still wave and nod 
with every cooling breeze, and the dear old bell, that 
every morning called the Indians to prayers, hangs in 
its rude belfry, outside the church, reminding the money- 
making and aggressive American that in those days 
men worshiped God and believed in a hereafter. In Au- 
gust, 1774, they changed their quarters and removed the 
mission and settlement six miles up the valley to a place 
called by the Indians Nij^aguay. Here they built a 



148 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

wooden church thatched with tule rushes, a blacksmith 
shop, storehouses and outbuildings for the men. 

On the night of November 5, 1775, the mission was 
attacked by the savages. No intimation, no warning or 
provocation was given. They swooped down upon the 
unsuspecting Spaniards, slaughtered Father Jaume and 
four others and burned the buildings, including the 
church. Father Fustre, who fortunately escaped the 
massacre, wrote an interesting account of the murder of 
the priest and the destruction of the mission. The fol- 
lowing year the mission was restored, and, in 1834, when 
the fathers were driven out by Mexican bandits, calling 
themselves the Eepublic of Mexico, the Indians were all 
Christians and civilized. 

His old mission of "Our Lady of Sorrows," at San 
Diego, was destroyed during the Mexican war, but some 
crumbling walls yet remain, eloquent memorials of the 
romantic past. The few acres of land and the buildings 
on them, which were confiscated and sold to a Mexican 
politician, were recovered for the church in 1856. Beside 
the dear old church there is now an industrial school, 
where the Indian children, from the reservations of 
Southern California, are trained and taught by the Sis- 
ters of St. Joseph. To this little farm belongs the dis- 
tinction of protecting the first olive trees planted on the 
continent of North America. Three miles above the 
school, the old dam built by the fathers and their Indian 
converts 125 years ago, is still in existence. From this 
dam, through a deep and ugly ravine, they carried an 
aqueduct of tiles imbedded in mortar and rubble to irri- 
gate their gardens. The gnarled old orchard, still bear- 
ing its fruit, is as luscious as in the days when the "old 
mission" brands of pickled olives and olive oil were fa- 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 149 

mous the world over. Indeed, they are famous yet. No- 
body wEo is anybody visits this queenly city of the royal 
harbor without calling at the old mission so redolent of 
pathetic incident and romantic enterprise. The friend- 
ly citizens of San Diego are proud of the historic mis- 
sion of "Our Lady of Sorrows," and of their beautiful 
harbor. One of these days, in the extensive park whicB 
they are now improving and beautifying, they will place 
on native granite pedestals, two statues — one of Viz- 
caino, who entered and named their splendid harbor, and 
another to Padre Junipero Serra, who first planted the 
cross of Christianity in Southern California. 

The history of the colonization and civilization of the' 
California coast by these brave, faithful and zealous 
priests, is in striking contrast with what happened in 
New England and Virginia, where the Indians were civ- 
ilized off the face of the earth. 

After establishing the San Diego mission. Father 
Serra pushed northward and planted a chain of Chris- 
tian pueblos one day's march apart. He and his priest- 
ly companions taught their converts to cultivate and 
irrigate the land, raise grain, fruits and vegetables, and 
make their labor profitable. ''I do not know," writes 
Mr. W. E. Curtis in the Chicago Record-Herald, "any 
missionary on any part of the earth — Catholic or Pro- 
testant — who accomplished more good for his fellow 
creatures. The heroism of Padre Junipero Serra, his 
usefulness, his self-sacrifice, his piety and his public 
services for the church and humanity entitle him to 
canonization. ' ' 

The Franciscans, in time, established fifteen missions, 
baptized 60,640 Indians before the expulsion of the 
order, introduced horses, cattle and sheep; planted 



150 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

orange and olive groves, and made of their swarthy con- 
verts a peaceful and industrious people. Left alone 
and in undisturbed pursuit of their apostolic work, the 
fathers would in time have converted and civilized all 
the tribes of the Pacific coast and the Southwest. From 
the day they opened the first mission to the Indians, until 
the confiscation of their property, in 1834:, the fathers 
met with opposition and discouragement. They succeed- 
ed in conquering the hostility of the savages, eradicating 
their foul superstitions and winning them to a Christian 
and a clean life, but their virtues, self-denial and heroic 
charity failed to subdue the cupidity and avarice of the 
founders of an illegitimate republic. 

From his death bed in his little monastery in Mon- 
terey, the saintly priest Junipero Serra asked his breth- 
ren to beg from God for more help in the desolate wil- 
derness. On the night of August 28, 1784, he was dying, 
and his last words were : ' ' Pray ye, therefore, the Lord 
of the harvest that He send laborers into His vineyard." 



BOOK III. 
IN THE LAND OF THE PAPAGOES 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



A LAND OF SCENIC WONDERS. 



After thirty days' traveling by train and burro, 
through Sonora and this extraordinary land, I arrived 
here last night, filled with amazement and admiration 
for the wonderful work of God made manifest in the 
strange configuration of this land and in the marvels 
wrought by the hand of time. Dante Aligherie, when he 
breathed his last in the picturesque capital of the Exar- 
chate, died 560 years too soon. If he were living to-day 
and travelled across this land of wonders, he would have 
seen upon the earth a region where Purgatory, Hell and 
Heaven had conspired to produce a bewildering viascope 
of all that is weird, terrible and awe-inspiring, side by 
side with the beautiful, the marvelous and romantic. With 
the possible exception of Sonora, in the Eepublic of Mex- 
ico, to which geographically and ethnographically Ari- 
zona belonged, there is not on the continent of America, 
perhaps not in the world, a land as full to repletion with 
all that is so fascinating in nature and startling to man. 

Only a few months ago, a sailing ship from Honolulu 
reported that the lava from Mount Matatutu, then in 
active eruption on the Island of Savaii, had covered 
thirty square miles, while in places the flowing stream 
was 200 feet high, and that in a part of the island a river 
of lava twelve miles wide was rushing to the ocean. The 
tale was laughed down and ridiculed in San Francisco, 
where the captain of the ship made his report. Yet here, 
almost on the boundary line of California, there are in- 
disputable, positive and visible proofs of a volcanic 



154 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

vomit compared to which the Matatutu discharge is but 
an intestinal disturbance. 

The San Francisco mountain, 13,000 feet high, on the 
northwestern edge of Arizona, is one of the most beauti- 
ful mountains in America. At some period, geologically 
recent, it was the focus of an igneus commotion of un- 
equaled duration and violence. It poured out rivers and 
lakes of lava, which covered the land for two hundred 
square miles and raised it in places 500 feet. This state- 
ment may stagger belief, but any one who leaves the 
Santa Fe at Ash Fork and follows the trail to the Hupais 
village of Ave Supais, and begins the descent of Cataract 
Canyon, may verify for himself the enormous depth of 
this unprecedented flow. 

Returning to Ash Fork, when the sun is declining and 
the skj^ flecked with clouds, the same man will see a 
sunset impossible of description, paralyzing the genius 
of a Paul. Loraine and the brush of a Turner. Then the 
heavens are bathed in a lurid blood color, in purple and 
saffron, or gleam with vivid sheen of molten, burnished 
gold, when a falling cataract of fiery vermilion rests 
upon the purple peaks and ridges of the western moun- 
tains. I know not any land where the full majesty of 
the text of the inspired writer is more luminously pres- 
ent than here in this region of wonders. ''The heavens 
declareth the glory of Grod and the firmament showeth 
His handiwork." 

East of the Missouri river this is an unknown land, 
even to the well-informed American. Wealthy and pre- 
sumedly educated citizens of the East spend millions 
annually sightseeing in Europe and Egypt, when here, 
within their borders, is a land where mysterious and 
pre-historic races dwell, where nature and nature's God 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 155 

have wrought incredible marvels unlike anything seen 
elsewhere upon the earth, and of which the people seem 
to have no appreciation. The hills and lakes of Switz- 
erland, the Alps and Appenines, to which thousands, 
year after year, go from America ostensibly to admire 
the configurations and towering heights of these histor- 
ically famous mountains, can offer nothing to the eye or 
to the imagination to be compared to the natural won- 
ders of their own land and of which they appear to be 
unconscious. 

Nowhere may there be found such extensive areas of 
arid deserts, crossed and recrossed in every direction by 
lofty mountains of strange formation, as in this com- 
paratively unknown region. Here are fathomless can- 
yons, dizzy crags and cloud-piercing peaks and a vast 
array of all the contradictions possible in topography. 
There are broad stretches of desert, where the winds 
raise storms of dust and whirl cyclones of sand, carrying 
death to man and beast. Here are to be found dismal ra- 
vines, horrent abysses and startling canyons, in whose 
gloomy depths flow streams of water pure and clear as 
ever rippled through the pages of Cervantes. Here are 
the cells of the cliff-dwellers, the burrows of the trog- 
lodytes, or pre-historic cave-men, the ruins of the ancient 
pueblo towns, and traces of pre-Columbian tribes who 
have gone down amid the fierce conflicts of tribal wars 
and have disappeared from off the earth. 

Darwin, Huxley and Maupas are welcome to their 
theories accounting for the origin of Man and his expan- 
sion from the brute to a civilized being, but my life 
among and my experience with savages have convinced 
me that the territor^^ separating the civilized from the 
savage man could never be crossed b}^ the savage un- 



156 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

assisted by a civilized guide, while all history proves that 
races at one time in possession of civilization have 
passed over that territory and descended into the gloomy 
depths of savagery, where many of them yet remain. In 
Arizona, at least, it was impossible for the Indian to lift 
himself out of his degradation, for when he began his 
rude cultivation of the land, the ferocious mountain 
tribes swooped down upon him and drove him into the 
desert or to the inaccessible cliffs. 

Following the instinct of self-preservation, he built 
his stone hut on lofty ledges or scooped from the friable 
mountain side, fifty, one hundred, two hundred feet in 
air, a cave which served for an observatory and a refuge 
for his wife and children. With a rope ladder, twisted 
from the viscera of the grey wolf, or the hide of the 
mountain lion, he climbed down from his lofty perch, re- 
turning with food and water for his miserable family. 
Thus began the now famous " cliff -dwellings, " which 
seventy years ago many of our learned antiquarians 
thought were the dens of an extinct species, half animal 
and half man. Seeing and knowing nothing of the rope 
which was always lifted by the woman when the man was 
at home or on the hunt, the deduction was quite natural 
that no human being could scale the face of the almost 
perpendicular cliff. 

The Moqui Indians still inhabit these strange rock 
lairs on the northern side of the Colorado Chiquito. 
There is no tribe of aborigines left upon the earth, there 's 
no region of the world, more deserving of examination 
than the Moquis and the mysterious land they occupy. 
Here at the village of Huaipi, on a mesa or table land 
surrounded by sand dunes and amorphous boulders of 
old red sandstone, is held every second year the mystic 




-Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York. 

MOQUI LOVERS ; CLIFF PEOPLE. 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 157 

rite of the ''Feast of the Snake," when the tribal medi- 
cine men, or shamans, holding in their mouths and fond- 
ling venomous rattlesnakes, dance around and through 
the sacred fire, and rushing wildly through the assembled 
crowd of women and children, disappear behind the estu- 
fas and liberate the reptiles. These Moqui dwellings and 
the Zuni pueblos of New Mexico are the oldest continu- 
ously inhabited structures in America and probably re- 
main more nearly in their original state than those of 
any other aboriginal people in North or South America. 

For ethnological study it is hardly possible to overes- 
timate the value of these strange people — the Moquis 
and the Zunis. In the accounts of their early explora- 
tions the Spanish missionary fathers found from eighty 
to a hundred cells of these pueblo and cliff dwellers in- 
habited in Sonora, Chihuahua and Arizona. Clearly the 
whole of New Mexico, Arizona and northern Mexico was 
occupied by these semi-civilized people, who lived in 
caves, stone and adobe houses, cultivated the land with 
stone hoes, and irrigated it with water brought in chan- 
nels from the nearest river. Centuries before the advent 
of the Spaniards, the decline of the race began, and event- 
ually would have ended in total savagery if the European 
had not entered upon the scene. Internecine wars, 
drought, pestilence, and, above all, the coming into the 
land of the fierce Apaches, or Dinnes, and their many 
predatory and annihilating raids, wore down the ancient 
race and threatened their extinction. All the adobe and 
stone ruins, all the remains of ditches and canals from 
all over the river lands of New Mexico and Arizona, are 
the relics of these strange people. 

This is not the place to enter into a disquisition on 
the origin or migration of the race. I may, however, 



158 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

add that in the common use of adobe, for building mate- 
rial, in the plain walls, rising to a height of many stories, 
in the architecture of their terraced structures, absence 
of doors in the lower stories, the ascent by external lad- 
ders to the higher, their buildings were altogether unlike 
any found in Mexico, Yucatan or Central America. In 
the absence of arched ceilings, of overlapping blocks, of 
all architectural decorations, of idols, temples and build- 
ings for religious rites, of burial mounds and mummies 
or human remains, rock inscriptions and miscellaneous 
relics, the monuments of the Zunis and Moquis present 
no analogies with the Mayas, Quiches or any known race 
of people now existing. 

Returning from this digression, let me continue my 
explorations. Here in this land of wonders is the Pet- 
rified Forest, where are to be seen trunks of giant trees 
over ten feet in diameter and a hundred feet long, 
changed from wood into carnelian, precious jasper and 
banded agate. Here are hundreds of tons — a riotous 
outpouring — of Chalcedony, topaz, agate and onjT^, pro- 
tected from vandals by decree of congress. Here also 
is the Cohino Forest, through which one may ride for 
five days and find no water unless it be the rainy season. 
There are places here where the ground is covered with 
pure baking soda, which at times rises in a cloud of irri- 
tating dust, and when driven by the wind excoriates the 
nostrils, throat, eyes and ears. There are depressions 
near the mouth of the Virgin River, where slabs of salt, 
two or three feet thick and clear as lake ice, may be cut ; 
and mirages of deceiving bodies of water so realistic that 
even the old desert traveler, parched with thirst, is some- 
times lured to his death. 

In this territory is Mogollon Mountain, whose sides 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 159 

and summit are covered with a forest of giant pine 
trees. At some time in the remote past, nature, when in 
an experimental mood, fashioned it, casting the huge 
freak to one side, and, laughing aloud, left it unfinished 
in the lonely desert. It is an unexampled unheaval, a 
marvelous oddity, from whose western rim one looks 
down 3,000 feet into the Tonto abyss, a weird depth, 
where ravines, arroyos, angular hills and volcanic set- 
tlings conspire to produce one of the roughest and 
strangest spots on the earth's surface. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



VEGETATION OF THE DESERT. 



I cannot resist the temptation of enlarging and dwell- 
ing upon, what I may term, the natural miracles of this 
extraordinary region. North of Yuma, on the Colorado, 
there are hundreds of acres of mosaic pavement fash- 
ioned from minute cubes of jasper, carnelian and agate, 
a flooring of tiny pebbles so hard and polished that, when 
swept by the wind, is as visibly compact and regular as 
if each cube was set in place by an artisan and forced 
down by a roller. At times this floor of precious stones 
is entirely hidden by the sand, then a fierce desert wind 
enters and sweeps it clean. Nowhere, unless it be the 
Giant's Causway, Ireland, have I seen stones laid with 
such mathematical accuracy. 

In this land of contradictions is the Painted Desert, 
with its fantastic surface of ocherous earth and varieties 
of marls rivalling the tints and colors of a large palette. 
Here, in this weird and singular territory, was opened 
by the Spaniards the now exhausted and abandoned 
mines of the Silver King and the Plancha de la Plata, 
where lumps of virgin silver weighing 2,000 pounds were 
discovered, and the Salero, where in Spanish times the 
padre, who had charge of the little mission, wishing to 
entertain with proper respect his bishop, who was paying 
his first visit to the camp, discovered when the table was 
set that there were no salt cellars. Calling two of his 
Indian neophytes, he ordered them to dig ore from the 
mine and hammer it into a solid silver basin, which he 
placed on the table, garnished with roses and ferns, and 



162 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

presented to the bishop when he was leaving for Du- 
rango, his episcopal see. 

In 1870 the last herd of wild horses was rounded up 
in Arizona, and here, too, corraled like the horses, and 
at about the same time, are the remnants of the Apaches, 
who, with no weapons, save bows and arrows, lance, 
knife and war club, defied for 250 years the fighting men 
of Spain and the United States. 

The Standard Iron Company is now tunneling earth 
near the Diabolo Canyon in search of the greatest me- 
teor ever heard of by meteorologists. When this com- 
posite visitor struck the earth it cut a channel 600 feet 
deep and nearly a mile in length. The land for miles 
around was, and is yet, covered with fragments of this 
star rock. Some of these pieces weighed many tons, and 
when broken up and reduced, ran high in valuable min- 
erals. The size of this meteor is said to be enormous, 
and judging from the value of the ore scattered around 
the great depression, the minerals embosomed in the 
meteor will amount to many millions of dollars. Distin- 
guished mineralogists of Europe and America have ex- 
pressed a wish to be present when the meteoric wonder 
is uncovered. Here, also, solidly perched on the breast 
of a small volcanic hill, is the only desert laboratory in 
the world. This hill projects from the base of a rugged 
mountain range, known as the Tucson, and was selected 
by the Spaniards as a site on which to build a blockhouse 
and observatory in the days when the Apaches terrified 
southern Arizona. From the crest of this volcanic 
mount one may sweep a circular horizon within which 
repose in awful majesty fifteen ranges of mountains, 
stretching southward into Mexico, northward into Cen- 
tral Arizona, and extending toward the west far into 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 163 

California. Within this circle the Spaniards were mak- 
ing history when the states of the East were a 
wilderness, and New York had as yet no place on the 
map of America. The mountains and the deserts remain 
as they were when the Spanish priest Marco, of Nizza, 
in 1539, crossed them on his way to the Moqui towns of 
Quivera. The vegetation even has undergone no change, 
for here, all around, and before you, are the giant Sua- 
haros, or Candelabrum cacti, the ocotilla, the Spanish 
dagger plant, with bayonets all a-bristle, the palo verde, 
the mesquite, prickly pear, sagebrush, and all the won- 
derful varieties of desert flora for which the Arizona 
deserts are notorious. 

The professor of botany in the University of Arizona 
tells me there are in Arizona 3,000 varieties of flower- 
carrying plants, and 300 different kinds of grasses. With 
the exception of the verbena and a few others, all the 
indigenous flowers are odorless, owing, it is said, to the 
absence of moisture in the air. All desert plants are 
protected against the greed or hunger, or, let us say, 
wanton destruction of man and animal, by spines or 
thorns. More than 680 varieties of the cactus alone have 
been discovered, catalogued and classified. All deserts 
have a botany of their own and a flora of infinite possi- 
bilities of value, and in the deserts of Arizona have been 
found plants of great medicinal value, many of them 
with unique and interesting characteristics. It is a very 
curious fact that the only varieties of the cactus without 
thorns known to exist in this region, are found growing in 
rock projections and ledges beyond the reach of animals. 
This was explained to me on the theory that, at some time 
in the past, this kind of cactus was common enough in 
the mountains, but that gophers, rabbits and other des- 



164 BY PATH AND TExUL. 

ert animals had long ago consumed all that could be 
reached. In "Wild West" books, and even in profes- 
sedly historical novels, one reads occasionally of this and 
that family or clan of Indians perishing of hunger or 
thirst. It is impossible for a normally healthy savage 
to die of hunger or perish from thirst on the Arizona des- 
erts. The white man! Yes, and often, the Indian never. 
It is a case of God tempering the wind to the shorn lamb^ 
or fitting the back to the burden. Under the thorns of 
every variety of cactus there is refreshing, nourishing 
and indeed, palatable food. The desert and mountain 
tribes knew this from immemorial times, and until they 
were confined to the reservations, cactus food formed a 
large part of their ordinary diet. They had a way of 
their own of stripping the needles from the plant, reach- 
ing the pulp and eating it cooked or uncooked. 

There are many fruit and berry bearing cacti, and 
these fruits and berries were gathered in season, eaten 
raw or boiled, and from which a delicious syrup or juice 
was extracted, and an intoxicating drink, called ' ' chaca, ' ' 
distilled. The pitayha and suaharo cacti grow to the 
height of twenty and thirty feet, and yield, when prop- 
erly tapped, from ten to twenty-gallons of pure drinking 
water. All desert plants contain a large amount of mois- 
ture, and the professors of the Carnegie desert labora- 
tory are now trying to find out how these desert plants^ 
especially the cacti, extract water from a parched and 
sandy soil, and moisture from hot air. There is a cac- 
tus, christened by the early Spaniards, the "barrel," 
which is 75 per cent water, and, strange to say, thrives 
best in hopelesslj^ barren lands in which no water is 
found within hundreds of miles, and on which no rain 
ever falls. 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 165 

The desert laboratory for the study of the flora of 
barren lands, is the property of the Carnegie Institute 
at Washington, and was founded by Mr. F. V. Coville, 
of the United States Department of Agriculture, a^d 
Dr. D. Trembly MacDougal, who was for years assist- 
ant director of the New York Botanical Garden. Dr. 
MacDougal is now here in charge of the department of 
botanical research. In its specialty of purpose there is 
only one other institution in existence, even collaterally 
related to this desert laboratory, and that is the college 
of science established lately in Greenland by the govern- 
ment of Denmark, for researches in arctic regions and 
the study of the flora and fauna of the far north. This, 
desert laboratory, under expert botanists, will include in 
its scope, the physiographic conditions of notable inter- 
est in the two great desert areas of western America,, 
deliminated by the geologist, the botanist, and the geog- 
rapher, and designated as the Sonora — Nevada desert 
and the Sinaloa — Chihuahua region of sand. These two 
regions embrace large sections of Idaho, Utah, Oregon^ 
Colorado, Washington, Nevada, California, Arizona, 
Baja California, Sonora and Sinaloa. In this classifica- 
tion the beds of many ancient lakes are included, and 
with them the yet existing Great Salt Lake. Dr. Mac- 
Dougal informs me that notable features in this vast 
body are the Snake river desert of Idaho, the Ralston 
sand lands of Nevada, the sage fields of Washington, the 
lava beds of Oregon, Death Valley, the Mojave Desert, 
the Colorado Desert, the Painted Desert in Arizona and 
New Mexico, the Salton bed and the great Sonora desert 
of Mexico. In the Californias — Southern and Lower — 
the desert vegetation and that of the coast lands meet, 
but, except in rare instances, never assimilate. I was 



166 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

surprised to hear from the distinguished professor, as 
without doubt you will be to read, that if the deserts of 
the earth could be brought into one area they would 
form a continent larger than all of North America. The 
wonderful and peculiar vegetation of the deserts has 
time and again invited and received the attention of 
learned botanists, but not until the founding of this Car- 
negie laboratory was any systematic and continuous 
study made of desert plant life. The assistant in charge 
of the botanical department corresponds with the famous 
botanists of the world, and is daily mailing to and re- 
ceiving specimens of desert flowers and plants from all 
parts of Asia, Africa and Australia. 

It may interest my readers to learn that, in the val- 
ley of the Salt River, in Arizona, the United States gov- 
ernment reclamation service has well under way one 
of the most remarkable engineering enterprises for the 
irrigation of desert lands ever undertaken. Before a 
hole was drilled for the actual work in this almost inac- 
cessible quarter of the Salt River Canyon, a wagon road 
twenty-^ve miles long had to be blasted from the side 
of the fearful gorge. Fifteen miles of this road pre- 
sented almost insurmountable difficulties, for it had to 
be run through the wildest and most precipitous portions 
of the awesome canyons. Then began the herculean task 
of preparation for controlling the turbulent waters of 
the river, which in the late spring become a rushing tor- 
rent. In a narrow part of this canyon the men, under 
expert hydrographic and civil engineers, are now build- 
ing a wall of solid masonry, which, when completed, will 
rise to a height of 270 feet. It will inclose a lake of stor- 
aged water twenty-five miles long and 200 feet deep. 
Sluices and canals will carrv water from this artificial 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 167 

lake to the parched lands. This government contract 
will cost $6,000,000, and will reclaim 200,000 acres of arid 
land. At the southern level of the lake stands the town 
of Roosevelt, not very old, as you may judge by the 
name, but substantially built. Well, when the resej-voir 
IS finished and the waters are about to be let in, ''Roose- 
velt must go." 



CHAPTER XX. 



TEMPLES OF THE DESERT. 



Among all the mission churches built by the Spanish 
missionary fathers, within the present limits of the 
United States, extending from the meridian of San An- 
tonio, Tex., to the Presidio of San Francisco, and em- 
bracing such examples as San Gabriel, outside of Los 
Angeles, and the mission church of San Jose, near San 
Diego, built by Padre Junipero Serra — of whom Bret 
Harte and Helen Jackson wrote so sympathetically — 
there is not one superior architecturally, and there are 
few equal to San Xavier del Bac. the church of the gen- 
tle Papagoes. The drive from Tucson to the mission is 
nine miles. To your left, within sound of its gurgling 
waters, flows the Santa Cruz, that for 400 years has 
filled a prominent place in the real and legendary history 
of Arizona. Springing from the floor of the valley, the 
Tuscon range of mountains and hills rise majestically 
to the right, and stretch southward to an interminable 
distance. Far away to the southwest — miles and miles 
away — the ''Twin Buttes," inflated with copper, tower 
in imperial isolation. Five miles from Tucson the road 
suddenly rises, and at once the bell-shaped dome and 
the Moorish towers of the church of the Papagoes break 
the sky line to the south. Another mile, and we enter 
the reservation and are received with an infernal disson- 
ance of barks, snarls and growls from a yelping pack of 
unpedigreed curs of low estate. The road winds through 
and around wikiups and cabins, past the humble grave- 
yard where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 



170 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

and where a forest of plain wooden crosses records the 
sublime hope and faith of the vanishing Papago. Before 
entering the church, I called to pay my respects and 
tender the tribute of my admiration to the three sisters 
of the community of St. Joseph, who for years have de- 
voted their lives to the mental and spiritual uplifting of 
the Indian children of the reservation. I found the class 
rooms clean, a plentiful supply of blackboards an/i mural 
tablets, and the walls ornamented with sacred and other 
pictures. The children were almost as dark as negroes, 
their coal-black hair falling over their shoulders and 
their snake-like eyes piercing and searching me as if I 
were an enemy. What clothes they wore were clean, and 
I found them as intelligent and as far advanced in their 
elementary studies as the children of white parents. 
''Sister," I said, ''how often do you have mass here?" 

"Twice a month, sir." 

"And in the meantime?" 

"In the meantime we are alone with the Blessed Sac- 
rament. ' ' 

"Oh, the bishop then permits the 'Reservation' in 
your oratory." 

"Yes, without the Blessed Sacrament we could not 
live here. We three are alone. We have no amusements, 
no society, and, outside of ourselves, no companionship. 
We do our own cooking, our own washing, our own 
scrubbing, and teach these eighty-five children six hours a 
day and give them an hour's religious instruction on 
Sunday. We also teach some of them music, and all of 
them singing." 

I shook hands with these heroic and estimable ladies, 
thanked them for their courtesies, and as I passed across 
the "patio" to enter the church, some lines from the 




-Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York. 
PAPAGO "WIKIUP." 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 171 

exquisite poem, '^The Sister of Charity," by Gerald 
Griffin, unbidden, visited by memory: 

' ' Behold her, ye worldly, behold her, ye vain, 
Who shrink from the pathway of virtue and pain; 
Who give up to pleasure your nights and your days, 
Forgetful of service, forgetful of praise. ' ' 

Before we enter the sacred and historic fane, let us 
go back some centuries, and from the shadowy past 
evoke the dead that we may learn from them something 
of the early days of this holy place. The first white man, 
of whom we have any record, to visit and preach to the 
Pimas and Papagoes of Southern Arizona, was that 
great Jesuit missionary and explorer. Father Eusibio 
Francisco Kino. In 1691 he left the Yaquis of Sonora 
on his wonderful missionary tour, and on foot crossed 
the deserts, preaching to the Apaches, Yumas and Mari- 
copas on the way. Late in October, of the same year, 
he entered the tribal lands of the Pimas and Papagoes, 
and from the Pima town on the Santa Cruz, now St. 
Xavier del Bac, a deputation was sent to escort him to 
their village. When the priest entered the village, Coro, 
chief of the Pimas and his warriors were parading and 
dancing around the scalps of Apaches, whom they had 
defeated in battle, and before whose dark and reeking 
hair they were now shouting their paens of victory. 
Mange, the historian of the Pimas — of whom the Papa- 
goes are a branch — says that the morning after Kino's 
arrival, Coro paraded before him 1,200 warriors in all 
the glory of war bonnets, bright blankets, head dresses 
of eagle feathers, scalp shirts, shields of deer hide, and 
gloaming lances. Father Kino remained here two or 
three weeks, teaching and instructing the tribe in the 



172 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

Christian religion, and when about to leave, marked on 
his chart the Pima valley and gave to it the name of 
San Francisco Xavier del Bac, perverted by local usage 
into "San Xavier del Bac." This intrepid missionary 
traveled through Lower California, Sonora and Arizona, 
instructing the desert Indians and baptizing, according 
to Clavigero, 30,000 infants and adults. From 1691 to 
1702 he visited all the tribes of these regions, solving 
many interesting problems of ethnology, erecting mis- 
sions and collecting vast treasures of information about 
the land and its wonderful people, the Yumas, Apaches, 
Opates, Pimas and Zunis. He reached the Gila in 1694, 
and said mass in the ancient ruin, the "Casa Grande," 
which is yet standing, in splendid isolation, amid a waste 
of burning sand. In 1700 he built the first church, and, 
according to his biographer, Ortega, "He used a light, 
porous stone, very suitable for building." 

The church records are extant from 1720-67, and show 
that during these years twenty-two Jesuit fathers suc- 
cessively administered Bac and neighboring missions. 
In 1768 the Franciscan fathers succeeded the Jesuits. 
In that year Father Garces assumed charge of this 
Pima mission. This extraordinary and saintly priest 
was one of the great men of these early days. In his 
quest for perishing souls he visited all the tribes of Ari- 
zona, crossing deserts, scaling mountains and enduring 
famine, tliirst and insult. He mapped, charted and 
named mountains, rivers and Indian settlements. He 
took latitudes and longitudes, and was the first white 
man to have reached the Grand Canyon from the west 
and give it a specific name. His diary or the itinerary of 
his travels was translated into English last year by that 
eccentric, but honest, bigot, Elliott Coues. With Mr. 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 173 

Coues' historic, topographic and invaluable notes, the 
diary of the priest, in two volumes, is a splendid addi- 
tion to the ethnographic literature of the Southwest. 

On the 19th of July, 1781, the great priest was mur- 
dered at the mission of the Immaculate Conception — 
now Yuma — in an Indian uprising against the Spaniards. 
The cornerstone of the present beautiful church of the 
Bac mission was laid by the Franciscan fathers in 1783, 
and the date, ' ' 1797, ' ' still legible over the door, records, 
no doubt, its completion. The historian, Hubert H. Ban- 
croft, calls the church a "magnificent structure," and 
devotes three pages of his History of Arizona to this mis- 
sion. In 1828, soon after Mexico broke away from her 
allegiance to the mother country and declared herself an 
independent republic, chaos reigned, and the fathers 
were compelled by the force of circumstances to aban- 
don their missions in Arizona. The Pima and Papago 
converts assembled in the church every Sunday and feast 
day, and for years, in fact until the return of a priest ap- 
pointed by the Bishop of Durango, said the beads, sang 
their accustomed hymns and made the stations of the 
cross. The historic building shows sadly the wear and 
tear of time and threatens to become a melancholy ruin 
in a few more years. 

Some time, let us hope, a gifted and conscientious his- 
torian will appear and do for the early missionaries of 
the Southwest, for the Kinos, the Garces, the Escalantes 
and the other saintly and heroic priests and martyrs, 
what Parkman has done for the early Jesuits of Canada 
and New York, and Bryan Clinch for the Spanish mis- 
sionaries of Southern and Lower California. It is pop- 
ularly believed that Coronado, on his way to the Zuni 
pueblos of New Mexico, was the first white man to gaze 



174 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

upon the now historic ruins known as the Casa Grande. 
I have once or twice mentioned the name of Father 
Eusebio Kino, a distinguished missionary and a heroic 
character, who merits more than an incidental reference 
in a book of travel, or in a history of Northern Mexico, or 
of the Southwest of the United States. 

Adolph Bandelier, Charles F. Lummis, and that inde- 
fatigable historical burrower and delver into musty man- 
uscripts, the late Dr. Elliott Coues, have settled for all 
time, that neither Coronado nor any one of his men ever 
saw or heard of the ''Casas Grrandes" — the great build- 
ings of Southern Arizona. The Jesuit priest, who was 
the first white man to see and explore the mysterious 
building — was Father Eusebio Kino, one of the most il- 
lustrious and heroic men that ever trod the Southwest, 
if not the American continent. The record of the trav- 
els and missionary labors of this magnificent priest are 
to be found in Bancroft's History of Arizona and Sonora, 
in Elliott Coues' *'0n the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer," 
in the ''Diario" of Juan Mateo Mange, a military officer 
who was with Padre Kino in some of his ^'entradas," 
or expeditions, and in the first volume of the second 
series of the work entitled ''Documentos para lo His- 
torio de Mexico," printed in Mexico City in 1854. Lieu- 
tenant Mange, in his journal, writes of Father Kino, 
whom he knew intimately: ''He was a man of wonder- 
ful talents, an astronomer, a mathematician, and cosmo- 
grapher. ' ' 

Before I relate the incidents associated with the dis- 
covery of the now famous ruins, the Casas Grandes, by 
Father Kino, let me hurriedly record something of the 
life and history of this remarkable priest and model mis- 
sionary. 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 175 

Eusebio Francisco Kuhne — or, as the Spaniards pro- 
nounced it, Kino, was born at Trent, Austrian Tyrol, in 
tlie year 1640. He was a blood relation of the famous 
Asiatic missionary, Father Martin-Martin. After grad- 
uating with honors, particularly in mathematics. Kino 
declined the chair of mathematics in the University of 
Bavaria, tendered to him by the Duke of Bavaria. Turn- 
ing aside from the promise of a distinguished future in 
Austria, he entered the Society of Jesus, and asked for 
a place on the foreign missions. Arriving in Mexico in 
1680, the year of Newton's comet, he was drawn into a 
friendly discussion on the origin of comets and the solar 
system, with the Spanish astronomer, then in Mexico 
City, Siguenza y Gongora. His remarkable familiarity 
with authorities and his great knowledge of the solar sys- 
tems, determined his assignation to duty in Lower Cali- 
fornia as cosmographer major on Admiral Isidore 
Otondo's expedition of 1683. 

Eeturning from Lower California, he was assigned 
by his ecclesiastical superior to the mission of Sonora, 
which then embraced all southern Arizona. On Decem- 
ber 16, 1687, he left the Jesuit college at Guadalajara, 
and traveling by burro and on foot, arrived in Sonora, 
where he founded the mission of ''Our Lady of Sor- 
rows," wliich remained his headquarters until his death. 
Now begins his wonderful career. 

Leaving his Indian mission in charge of an assistant 
priest, he struck out for the Mayo hunting grounds, and 
entering the valley of the Rio Magdalena, preached to the 
Mayos, and gathering them in, founded the pueblo or vil- 
lage settlement of St. Ignatius. He now swung toward 
the north and established among the Humori the pueblo 
of St. Joseph of Humoris, now known as Imuris. 



176 BY PATH AND TKAIL. 

Returning to his mission of Our Lady of Sorrows, lie 
waited for the coming of Father Juan Maria de Salva- 
tierra, the superior and visitador, or visitor of the Indian 
missions of Mexico. This was the Father Salvatierra 
who established the *' Pious Fund" for the California 
Indians, and who afterward opened the mission to the 
Digger Indians and became known as the Apostle of 
Lower California. 

A few days after the arrival of Salvatierra, the two 
priests set out on a missionary itinerary, visiting and 
preaching to the tribes of northern Sonora, till they 
came to Cocaspera, near Nogales, where they separated; 
Salvatierra returning by Our Lady of Sorrows to Guad- 
alajara. 

Father Kino tarried for some time at Cocaspera, in- 
structing the Indians, and early in May, 1691, started ou 
his historic desert journey to the Santa Cruz valley, 
where he preached to the Pimas and founded the pueblo 
and mission of San Xavier del Bac. 

To describe the fatigues and hardships of a journey 
in those days from Nogales to Tucson, to record the 
varied and very interesting interviews and experiences 
with the tribes, many of whom had never before seen 
a white man, to relate the hardships and trials of the 
great missionary, would put too severe a tax on my read- 
ers, so I hurry on to the Casas Grandes. 

In 1694 Lieutenant Juan Mateo Mange, nephew of 
Petriz de Crusate, ex-governor of New Mexico, was com- 
missioned to accompany Father Kino on his visits to 
the Indian tribes, and on his exploring expeditions, and 
to report in writing what he saw and learned. Mange 
joined the great priest at his mission of Our Lady of 
Sorrows on February 7, 1694; they crossed the Sierra 



BY PATH AND TRAIL, 177 

del Comedio, and on the 15th reached the coast, first of 
white men from Pimeria Alta — from the west — to look 
out upon the waters of the great gulf. At Turbutana, 
Mange left the priest for a time, and went up the Col- 
orado river to a rancheria named Cups, so called from 
a smoking, rocky cave in the neighborhood. Returning 
he joined Kino at Caborca, bringing news of famous 
ruins said to exist on the banks of a river entering into 
the Colorado, or River of the Immaculate Conception, as 
Kino christened it. This was the first intimation the 
Spaniards had of these remarkable buildings. The party 
now returned to the mission of Our Lady of Sorrows, 
Sonora. While here, some Indians, Pimas from San 
Xavier, on the Santa Cruz, Arizona, came on a visit to 
the priest, who. questioned them on the existence of the 
pre-historic ruins near the Gila river. They informed 
him that these wonderful ruins were standing on the 
desert, but of their origin they knew nothing. 

In October, 1694, Kino, accompanied and settled Fran- 
cis Xavier Saeta as missionary at Caborca, where he was 
murdered by the Yumas, April 2, 1695. Leaving Saeta 
at this mission, Father Kino now set out alone on an 
expedition to the Casas Grandes. He reached the Gila, 
camped for the night, and on the morning of November 
30, entered the region of the ruins, and in the largest 
of the three buildings offered up the Holy Sacrifice of 
the Mass. Mange, on page 25 of his published report, 
in Spanish, gives the whole history, and bestows great 
praise on Kino. 

The priest was the first white man who saw and ac- 
curately described these now famous pre-Columbian 
ruins. This wonderful priest tramped the valley of the 
Santa Cruz to the Gila. Passing down the Gila to its 



178 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

mouth, after exploring the country, he retraced his 
steps, penetrating the land north of the Gila river for 
some distance, and ascending the Salt river and other 
northern branches of the Gila. His explorations did not 
end here. Proceeding east, he explored the valley of the 
San Pedro and its branches, then the Gila to the Mim- 
bres, and on to the Rio Grande and the Messila valley. 
He went from Yuma, crossed the Colorado desert, and 
traced the Colorado river to its mouth. He visited sixty- 
three tribes, sub-tribes and families, studying the wars, 
customs, traditions, folk-lore and habits of the Indians. 
He founded missions, built churches, made maps and 
tracings, took observations and left us a mass of valua- 
ble information on the botany, geology and temperature 
of the country. His map was in his time, and long after 
his death, the best delineation of Sonora, southern Ari- 
zona and the gulf coast of Southern California. His 
life was an unparalleled record of devotion, heroism and 
dauntless courage. Of him we may repeat what Bacon 
wrote of Pius V., to whom Christendom is indebted for 
the victory of Lepanto : ' ' I am astonished that the Ro- 
man church has not yet canonized this great man." 

On February 5, 1702, Father Kino, accompanied by 
Father Gonzalez (the same missionary who was with 
Kino on his excursion to the mouth of the Colorado), 
started on a missionary expedition to the Gila Indians, 
and went from tribe to tribe, till he arrived at the mis- 
sion of St. Ignatius on the Colorado river. Here Father 
Gonzalez, worn out with hardship and illness, lay down 
and died. After giving Christian burial to his priestly 
companion, the great priest returned to his mission in 
Sonora. His report of his entrada, or expedition, bears 
the date April 2, 1702. He never again saw the Colorado 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 179 

or Gila. He was growing old, and his strong constitu- 
tion was beginning to give way under the weight of 
years, and the wear and tear of missionary travel and 
missionary labor. His last, and, in a sense, his most 
extended journey, was made toward the north, during 
the autumn of 1706. He left his mission late in October, 
and swinging around by way of Remedios, made his 
wonderful tour to the Santa Clara mountains, preach- 
ing to and evangelizing the tribes on his way. From 
the summit of Santa Clara he looked out for the last 
time on the waters of the Gulf of California, noting the 
continuity of Lower Caiiiornia from Pimeria, tiie main 
land, and fixing for all time its peninsular character. 
This was the last, long, eartnly pilgrimage of the great 
Jesuit and typical missionary, whose explorations and 
fearless endurance on behalf of perishing souls, lift him 
unto a plane of canonization and a pedestal of fame. He 
returned to his mission in Sonora, where he passed his 
few remaining years, training his swarthy converts in 
decency and clean living, making short visits to neigh- 
boring pueblos, and adding by his heroism and saintly 
life another name to the catalogue of brilliant and won- 
derful men for whom the world and the church are in- 
debted to the Society of Jesus. He died in 1711, aged 
70, having surrendered thirty of these seventy years to 
the saving and civilizing of the Sonora and Arizona 
members of that strange and mysterious race, the Amer- 
ican Indian. 

Let us hope that some day a Catholic Parkman will 
appear, gifted with his marvelous fascination of style, 
his tireless industry, his command of language, with an 
appreciation of the supernatural, and an admiration of 
saintly asceticism, which the Harvard master had not, 



180 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

and do for the dauntless Spanish missionaries of Lower 
CaHfornia, the coast and the Southwest, what Parkman 
dfd for the French missionary priests of Canada and 
western New York, when he bequeathed to us his immor- 
tal ''Jesuits of North America." 



CHAPTER XXI. 



A MIRACLE OF NATURE. 



On the earth's surface there is no plat of ground 
bristling with sharper problems for the microscopist, or 
that offers to the analyst more interesting specimens for 
examination, than the eight or ten square miles of land 
in northeastern Arizona, known as the Petrified Forest. 
Here nature exults in accomplished miracles, in mar- 
velous and seemingly impossible transmutations, in 
achievements transcending imagination and the possi- 
bilities of science. Here, where the giant trees fell in 
the days before man was upon the earth to count time, 
they lie to-day, with shape and outline unchanged, with 
bark and cell and nodule unaltered to the eye, with 
everything the same save that alone which constitutes a 
tree and gives to it its own specific name. Here, for 
miles around, the land is chased with unpolished jewels, 
which ask but the touch of the lapidary's art to reproduce 
Milton's '' firmament of living sapphires." They re- 
main with us to bear imperishable testimony to the dec- 
laration of the evangelist, that, '^with God, all things are 
possible." 

When the adventurous Spaniards returned home from 
the Orinoco and the shores of the Spanish Main, after 
their fruitless expedition in quest of the ' ' El Dorado ' ' — 
the gilded man — and told of the wondrous things and 
monstrous creations they had seen — the Lake of Pitch, 
the disappearing rivers, the land and sea monsters, the 
men with tails, the Amazons, the female warriors who 
gave their name to the greatest river in America — the 



182 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

world marveled, but believed. Yet when Andres Do- 
rantes and Alonzo Maldonado returning after years of 
wandering in the desert and mountain lands of south- 
western America, recorded the existence of a great forest 
they had visited, where precious stones of jasper and 
onyx strewed the ground, and where trees of agate and 
carnelian, blown down by a mighty wind, encumbered 
the earth, there was an uppricking of ears among the 
learned men of Madrid, then a wagging of heads and 
finally loud and incredulous laughter. As well ask them 
to believe in the existence of a herd of cattle suspended 
in mid-air, frozen into rigidity and retaining their shapes 
and outlines. Yet the forest was here and is here now, 
unchanged and unchangeable. 

In the memorial to congress, adopted in 1895, by the 
legislative assembly of Arizona, requesting that Chal- 
cedony Forest be made a national park, the area of the 
forest is defined to be ''ten miles square, covered with 
trunks of agatized trees, some of which measure over 
200 feet in length, and from seven to ten feet in diam- 
eter." In this official statement we have the limits of 
the wonderful region accurately defined, and the mate- 
rial of the trees recorded. 

I have seen the petrified trees of Yellowstone Park, 
some of them yet standing, the stone trees of Wyoming, 
and those of the Calistoga Grove of California, but the 
petrified region of Arizona is the only place in the world 
where the trees are in such number as to merit the name 
of a forest. In delicacy of veining, in brilliancy and va- 
riety of coloring, they outclass all other petrifications. 
But Professor Tolman, the geologist of the University 
of Arizona, tells me there is another notable distinction 
which places this forest of chalcedony in a class by itself. 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 183 

The trees are much, very much more ancient than those 
of Yellowstone park. Of course, I cannot mark time with 
Professor Tolman when figuring upon the very remote 
beginning of creation. I am yet a Christian, and will, I 
am satisfied, die in my belief in revelation. My studies 
in archaeology and paleontology but confirm me in my 
attachment to the orthodox school of theology. Dr. Tol- 
man and the school to which he belongs count by millions 
of year^, I count by thousands. *'The petrified trees of 
all other known localities," said the learned professor 
of geology, "are of tertiary age, while the Arizona for- 
est goes far back into Mesozoic time, probably to the 
Triassic formation. The difference in their antiquity is 
therefore many millions of years." 

And, now, before I attempt to describe this great won- 
der, as it appeared to me, let me for a moment linger 
by the wayside. About sixteen years ago there was a 
man named Adam Hanna, who lived between the Santa 
Fe railroad and the nearest point to the petrified forest. 
When the oflBcials of the road decided to build a station 
due north of the forest and about eight miles from the 
Natural Bridge, they gave it the name of Adamana, in 
compliment to Mr. Adam Hanna, upon whom fell the 
honor of conducting scientists and visitors to the forest. 
At Adamana, I stepped from the train, and, with a com- 
panion, took the stage for the petrified lands. Midway, 
between the station and the Natural Bridge, we left the 
wagon and struck across the country to visit the ruins 
of an Indian pueblo and fortification, whose people had 
disappeared many years before the Spaniards crossed 
the mountains of Arizona. Approaching the ruin we en- 
tered the tribal graveyard, where some years ago a vast 
accumulation of silver and copper ornaments, of agate 



184 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

spearheads, arrow tips of jasper and obsidian and beau- 
tiful pottery was unearthed. These were buried with 
the dead, whose bones had wasted to dust many years be- 
fore the white vandals had rifled the graves. The pre- 
historic buildings are now a confused mass of sun-dried 
brick and sandstone, but when Mulhausen was here sixty 
years ago, the divisionary lines of 300 houses or rooms 
were traceable, and a few feet of a wall standing. When 
the exploring party for the Pacific railroad passed here 
in 1853, it was said that traces of unique pictographs or 
symbolic writings yet remained on the face of a neigh- 
boring cliff. A little to the west of Chalcedony Park are 
the remains of another abandoned village. A few scat- 
tered huts are still nearly intact, unique, ghost-like, 
alone, unlike anything found elsewhere upon the earth. 
The material entering into their construction is like 
unto that of which the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse 
is built, for "the building of the walls thereof are of 
jasper, and the foundations adorned with all manner of 
precious stones," 

The ancient builders selected silicified logs of uniform 
size for their dwellings, and, with adobe and precious 
chips of Chalcedony, chinked the valuable timbers. Never 
did prince or millionaire choose more beautiful or more 
imperishable material for even a single room of his 
palace than the trunks of these trees which stood erect 
ages before the first man saw the setting sun. 

When I entered the wonderful forest and ascended 
an elevation from which I could command my surround- 
ings, I experienced a feeling of disappointment. From 
magazine articles and letters of travelers, I was led to 
believe that this mystic region was a dream of scenic 
joy. I confess I was keyed up too high by these descrip- 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 185 

lions, and for a time was not in accord with my environ- 
ment. The land here is a desert, lifted 5,000 to 6,000 
feet above sea level, and cut up into small mesas or table 
levels, into many ridges, buttes, gulches and miniature 
ravines carrying little vegetation. Flowing southward, 
into a winding channel, is the Lithodendron (stone 
river), or, more correctly, creek. The valley of this river 
at a certain bend widens out to the east and west, form- 
ing an alluvial depression whose banks and slopes are 
rugged, spurred and ravined. Here one enters the heart 
of the petrified forest, and the section known as Chal- 
cedony Park. And now everything and the position of 
everything are startling. On the knolls, spurs and iso- 
lated elevations, in the hollows, ravines and gulches, on 
the surface of the lowlands, piled up as if skidded by tim- 
bermen or flung recklessly across each other in heaps, 
lie the silicified logs in greatest confusion. Everywhere, 
with unstinted prodigality, the ground is sown with 
gems, with chips, splinters and nodules of agate, jasper 
and carnelian of all shapes and sizes, and displaying all 
the colors of the lunar rainbow. 

Buried in the sand hills rising above the valley to the 
west, are petrified logs squaring three and four feet 
at the butts which protrude from the beetling bluifs. 
Curiously enough, specimens from these trunks are not 
of agate color, but of a soft blending of brown and gray 
and absolutely opaque, while chips from the trees in the 
valley are translucent, and many of them transparent 
as glass. The state of mineralization in which many of 
these valley trees are found almost lifts them into ma- 
terial for gems and precious stones, opals, jasper, ame- 
thysts and emeralds. One of the most extraordinary fea- 
tures of this marvelous region is the Natural Bridge, an 



186 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

agatized tree, spanning a miniature canyon twenty-five 
feet deep and thirty feet wide, on which a man may 
safely cross. The tree is in an excellent state of preser- 
vation and shows no marks of sand abrasion; it lies 
diagonally across the ravine and measures a span of 
forty-four feet. From end to butt the tree is 110 feet 
long and, as with all the stone logs of this quarter 
of the forest, there are no branches adhering to top or 
body. So much of the material of the forest retains its 
natural color, bark and shape, and so true is the piling 
that looking on them one would be inclined to believe 
that some settler, who was clearing the land, had left for 
dinner and might at any moment return and fire the pile. 
Another very singular and as yet unexplained phenome- 
non are the rings or divisionary markings encircling 
many of the logs from end to end. These ring marks 
girdle the trunks every eighteen inches and do not vary 
the eighth of an inch. Either by the disintegration of 
the mesa or by torrential floods the trees have been car- 
ried down from higher levels and in the moving suffered 
many fractures, some of them being broken into frag- 
ments. Now all these logs, measuring from twenty to 
ninety feet, broke transversely and every time the break 
was on the ring. How these rings were formed remains 
to this day an unsolved problem. The material of these 
trees is so hard that some years ago an abrasive com- 
pany of Chicago made preparations to grind the logs 
into emery. Their plant was brought from Chicago to 
Adamana, where it is now falling to pieces from rust and 
neglect. In answer to my enquiry why it was not set up, 
I was told that a Canadian company, at about the same 
tiine, began at Montreal the manufacture of abrasive 
sand and lowered the price of the material below the 



BY PATH AND TEAIL. 187 

point wliere*^ it would pay to grind up the trees. Out of 
this agatized wood have been manufactured most beauti- 
ful table tops, mantels, clock cases, pedestals and orna- 
mental articles. But the cost, of sawing, chisehng and 
polishing make the goods very expensive. To give you 
an example. When Tiffany's workmen started to saw off 
a section from one of these logs to form i\ pedestal for 
the silver vase of the Bartholdi presentation, they began 
with a six-inch saw of Sheffield steel aided with diamond 
dust. Sawing eight hours a day, they were five days 
cutting through a four-foot log which wore their six-inch 
saw to a ribbon one-half inch wide. Although there are 
millions of tons of the petrified material scattered around 
this region, the lust of gain and accumulation, which be- 
comes a passion with some of us, would soon strip the 
forest to the naked desert if congress had not intervened 
to save it. For forty years' despoilers have been rifling 
the land, gathering and shipping the silicified wood to 
the east. Much has been sold to museums and private 
collectors, but much more has been shipped to dealers 
and manufacturers. Visitors to the park may carry 
away with them a few specimens, but no dealing or 
trafficking in the precious material is now permitted. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



THE PRE-HISTORIC RUIN. 



I am writing near the foothills of the Catalina moun- 
tains and from the bed of an evaporated inland sea. It 
is now a desert whose vegetation is unlike anything seen 
east of the Missouri river. Around me tower the statu- 
esque "pithaya" or candelabrum cactus, bearing in sea- 
son luscious fruit ; the massive bisnaga, of wondrous for- 
mation and erratic habits, whose fruit is boiled by the 
Maricopa squaws and made into palatable candy. From 
the slopes of the mountains spring giant specimens of 
the thorny * ' sahuaro, ' ' resembling from afar monuments 
erected by man to commemorate some great historical 
events in the life of the early people. Further down, 
near the bed of an exhausted stream, are patches of 
withered ''palmilla" or bear's grass, from which the 
Pima women make waterproof baskets. Aroimd the 
desert, miles and miles away, rise porphyritic mountains, 
the Rincons, the Santa Rita, the Tortillitas, grim, 
savage and withal picturesque and weirdly fasci- 
nating. Their rugged sides are torn, gashed and cut to 
pieces, their cones now cold and dead, stand sharp and 
clear against a sky of opalescent clearness. In times 
past, in years geologically not very remote, the flanks of 
these towering hills were red with fire and their peaks 
ablaze with volcanic flame. 

Gazing on them from afar you experience a sensation 
of awe, a consciousness of the earth's great age domi- 
nates you, and down the avenues of time, down through 
the ages there comes to you the portentous question of 



190 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

the inspired author of Ecclesiasticus : "Is there any- 
thing whereof it may be said: see, this is new; it hath 
been already of old time, which was before ns." Almost 
within gunshot of where I sit repose in solitary isola- 
tion a group of buildings, the despair of antiquarians and 
historically very old. The central building is a large 
edifice, whose adobe walls have resisted for many centu- 
ries the erosion of time, the abrasion of drifting sand 
and the wear and tear of torrential storms. This is the 
now historic ''Casa Grande" or Great House, so named 
by the early Spanish explorers. Its walls are almost 
oriented to the four cardinal points, built of adobe blocks 
of unequal length and laid with symmetry in a cement 
of the same composition as the walls. This famous group 
of ruins rests on a raised plateau, about two miles to 
the south of the Gila river, in the midst of a thick growth 
of mesquite. Many of the buildings, from two to four 
stories high, are now roofed and kept in repair by the 
United States government, and are included in the pro- 
tected governnaental reserves. Around the principal 
buildings are heaps of ruins and many acres of shapeless 
debris, all that remain of an ancient Indian town or 
pueblo that was abandoned long before the daring Span- 
iard, Francisco de Coronado, in 1540, entered Arizona. 
It was through this wild and mystic region that Padre 
Marcos made his weird expedition in 1539 in quest of the 
elusive seven cities of Cibola. In his report of his ex- 
plorations he mentions the great buildings, then known 
to the Pima tribe by its Indian name of ' ' Chichilitical. ' ' 
Here, too, after wandering over thousands of miles of 
mountains and barren deserts, passed the daring adven- 
turers and explorers, Pedro de Tehan, Lopez de Car- 
dines and Cabezza de Vaca, the solitary survivors of Nar- 



JL%^-,^ i 







-Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York. 

RUINS, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 



BY PATH AND TEAIL. 191 

vaes ' unfortunate expedition which went to pieces at the 
mouth of the Suwanee river, one hundred years before 
De Soto crossed the Mississippi. After them came the 
fearless and saintly missionary, Padre Eusebio Kino, so 
highly praised by Venaga, the early historian of Cali- 
fornia. Of the time when the Casa Grande was left deso- 
late before the coming of the Spaniards as early as 
1539, or when the ground was broken for the foundations 
of the town, whose walls even then were an indistinguish- 
able heap of ruins, the neighboring tribes had no tradi- 
tion. It is really wonderful how these structures of sun- 
dried brick have resisted the ravages of decay and the 
elements for 500 years of known time. 

These mysterious people carried from the Gila River 
an irrigation canal three miles long, 27 feet wide and 
10 feet deep, and converted the barren sands around 
them into fertile gardens. The word ''pueblo" in Span- 
ish means simply a village, but in American ethnography 
it has obtained a special significance from the peculiar 
style of the structures or groups of buildings scattered 
along the Gila and Salt Eiver valleys, whose architecture 
was unlike that of any buildings found outside the north- 
ern frontiers of Mexico, Arizona and New Mexico. The 
most fertile valleys of these regions were occupied by a 
semi-civilized and agricultural race. The face of these 
lands was dotted with buildings five and six stories high, 
held in common by many families, and in many instances 
the houses and villages were superior to those of the 
new existing pueblo towns. They were built for defense, 
the walls of great thickness and the approaches in many 
cases difficult. At least a century, perhaps many centu- 
ries, before the coming of the Spaniards, the decline be- 
gan and continued with the certainty of a decree of fate, 



192 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

until but a mere remnant of the town builders and their 
singular structures now remains in the valley of the Rio 
Grande and the land of the Moqui. Bartlett and Hubert 
Bancroft, the historians, are of the opinion that, at one 
time, in the Salt River country there was a population 
of 200,000 Indians — Pimas, Maricopas and Papagoes — of 
whom buf a pitiful remnant now remains. Of a certain- 
ty, tribal wars and, it may be, famine and pestilence wore 
down the race and in a few years the white man's vices 
and the white man's diseases will finish them. Whether 
they would ever have advanced beyond their rude ar'chi- 
tecture and simple hoe culture is very doubtful. I am of 
the opinion, from a study of and experience with the 
Brazilian tribes, that when the Europeans came to the 
southwest the indigenous people were descending from 
barbarism to savagery, and, like the Aztec tribes of 
Mexico, would, with the march of time, become cannibals. 
Savage man cannot of himself move upward. The negro 
of equatorial Africa was a savage long before the time 
of Herodotus; for four thousand years he took not one 
single step toward civilization, and Livingstone and 
Stanley found him the same brutalized man that he was 
in the days of the first Rameses. St. Paul, two thou- 
sand years ago, in language that admits of no equivoca- 
tion, said that it was impossible for man to attain to a 
knowledge of the higher truths without a teacher. The 
low state of some of the American tribes, the South Sea 
islander, and the African savage, when first encountered 
by civilized man, would seem to prove that, unassisted by 
a higher type of the human race, the savage cannot rise 
out of his degradation. And if even man, when having 
gone down to savagery, could never ascend the steep de- 
cline he Ead once trodden, how was it possible for the 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 193 

half-ape — half-man of the Agnostic to lift himself to a 
higher plane? I cannot resist the malicious suspicion 
that all these puerile and violent attempts to account for 
the origin of man were intended to destroy the credibility 
of revelation and belief in the divinity and perpetuity of 
Christianity. 

Here, near the Casa Grande, I saw for the first time 
the alligator lizard or "Gila monster," imprisoned in a 
wire enclosure on the ranch of a Mexican vaquero. Full 
grown, this repulsive reptile is three feet long, of a 
black-brownish color, with the snout of a crocodile and 
the eye of a snake. The hideous and venomous thing 
bore an evil reputation three thousand years ago. He 
is the only surviving reptile that answers to the Biblical 
description of the cockatrice or basilisk. In those early 
days it inspired loathing and was shunned for its subtlety 
and dreaded bite. It was selected, with the asp and other 
poisonous creatures, by Isaiah to illustrate the benign 
influence of our Divine Lord in subduing the fierce pas- 
sions of men which he compared to ravenous beasts and 
poisonous reptiles. In prophetic allegory the inspired 
Judean foretells the time when ''the suckling child shall 
play on the hole of the asp and the weaned child shall put 
his hand in the den of the basilisk. ' ' Is the bite of this 
repulsive creature fatal? When the Gila monster at- 
tains its growth and is not in a torpid or semi-torpid 
condition its bite is as serious as that of the rattlesnake. 
When young or in a torpid state, often for four months 
of the year, the '*hila" does not secrete poison. Ignor- 
ance of the habits of the reptile have led to interminable 
disputes and discussions making an agreement of opinion 
impossible. When I was in Yuma I met a surgeon who, 
last year, treated two men who had been bitten. I need 



194 BY PATH AND TEAIL. 

not enter into the details of how they happened to be 
bitten. One man came to the surgeon last November, 
three hours after the ^'hila" sank his teeth in his hand. 
The doctor cauterized the wound and the man experi- 
enced no more inconvenience than he would from the 
bite of a gopher. The other man, Ernest Phair by name, 
was bitten at four in the afternoon, had the wound cauter- 
ized and treated with antiseptics two hours after the 
bite. At 10 'clock that night he was ' ' out of his mind, ' ' 
his limbs became shockingly tumefied and at 2 o 'clock in 
the morning Phair died. This loathsome creature of 
giant wrack is disappearing and in twenty or thirty years 
it will be extinct. Reference here to Yuma reminds me 
that nowhere in the southwest have I seen tramps, hoboes 
and yegg men behave themselves as well as they do in 
this town. When I mentioned this good behavior of the 
''floating brigade" to Sheriff Livingston he said that 
conditions made for it. ''You see," continued the sheriff, 
"there is practically no escape from Yuma for a crimi- 
nal. The only avenues open are the railroad and the 
river. To strike across the country would mean death 
from thirst on the desert. This accounts for the fact 
that the tramps and hoboes are very peaceful in Yuma. 
The river and railroads offer no hope to an escaped 
prisoner, for they are too well policed." 

Accompanied by a guide, I left Casa Grande early in 
the forenoon on burros or donkeys, and struck southeast 
across the Aravapi desert, hoping to reach the historic 
town of Tucson some time in the afternoon of the next 
day. Passing over ten miles of desert we entered the 
canyon of Santa Catalina in the mountains of the same 
name. For four miles we traveled through a dark and 
dismal gorge enclosed by walls 1,000 feet above the trail 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 195 

and no place wider than an ordinary street. Wherever 
a cat conld stand a cactus grew, whose thorny plates 
matted the face of the escarpment. Sheltered from the 
sun by walls of solid granite, porphyry or basalt, the 
great pass was cool and the silence intense. Here and 
there were piles of loose stones and boulders deposited 
when the rains of the summer solstice swept madly down 
the flanks of the Catalinas and swelled this gorge to a 
rushing torrent. 'When we emerged from the gloomy 
canyon we saw before us another desert, stretching away 
many miles to the Santa Rita range, supposed by the 
early Spanish explorers to contain fabulous hordes of 
gold and silver. To our right rose the Baboquivari, the 
sacred mount of the Papagoes. Across this desert four 
hundred years ago marched the Spanish missionary and 
explorer, Father Marcos of Nizza, on his way to the 
Zuni towns in northern Arizona to bear a message of 
salivation to these strange people, "who sat in darkness 
and in the shadow of death. ' ' 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



A CITY IN THE DESERT. 



Nowhere is the dividing line between the old and the 
new so sharply drawn as in Tucson. I do not mean the 
growth from a frontier or bush village into a city or that 
of a mining camp into a town as in the mineral states. 
To this transition we are accustomed. Here the modern 
city has grown away from the old Mexican pueblo which 
is yet a numerically strong part of it, growing out into 
the desert, leaving the quaint old Mexican village in 
possession of the fertile valley of Santa Cruz. It is not a 
divorce — a mense et thoro — from bed and board, nor yet 
a separation, but rather a spreading out, an elongation 
of the young giant towards and into the desert. The his- 
toric pueblo, so full of romance and story, is left in pos- 
session of its own ground, its own religion, language, tra- 
dition and customs. Its people have a voice in the selec- 
tion of the mayor and are eligible for any office in the 
gift of the citizens, are protected by the same laws and 
the same police as are those of whiter color. 

Tucson had a name and was a rancheria of Pimas, 
Papagoes and Sobaipuri before the great missionary, 
Padre Kino, visited it in 1691. He was the first white 
man that ever crossed the Santa Cruz from the west and 
entered Tucson. In 1773 it was still a rancheria, but 
many of its swarthy denizens had already been received 
into the church; it was visited regularly by the priests 
of San Xavier del Bac and was now San Jose de Tucson. 
In 1771 the Spanish garrison or presidio at Tubac was 
shifted to Tucson, a resident priest appointed and the 



198 BY PATH AKD TRAIL. 

adobe church of St. Augustin built, the walls of which 
are yet standing on the east bank of the Santa Cruz, one 
of the disappearing rivers of the southwest. With the 
coming of the railroad in 1880 the really modern Tucson 
begins. In 1803 two meteoric bodies were found here 
weighing respectively 1,600 and 632 pounds. The rub- 
bish that has been written about Tucson in the news- 
papers, books and magazines of the east, is only matched 
by the myths and fables published about Santa Fe. From 
before Father Kino's visit in 1691 Tucson was never 
heard of. Since then, down to the building of the South- 
ern Pacific, its history is a record of blood and murders, 
of Apache raids, of Mexican feuds and American out- 
laws, gamblers and hold-up men who exterminated each 
other or were lynched by the law-abiding citizens. To- 
day Tucson is a city of law and order and will soon be 
the metropolis of Arizona. So much by way of a preface 
and now let us continue our impressions of the city. 

The early Spaniards civilized and Christianized the 
Aztecs of Mexico and intermarried with them. From 
these unions were begotten the race known to-day as 
Mexican, though the average American very often con- 
fuses — and very annoyingly to the Mexican-;— the Indian 
tribes of the Mexican republic with the descendants of 
the Spanish colonists and military settlers and the daugh- 
ters of the warriors of Montezuma. The Spaniards did 
something more. They imparted to their descendants 
courtesy, civility and high ideals. They taught them all 
those nameless refinements of speech and manner which 
impart a gracious flavor to association and a charm to 
companionship. 

I cannot help thinking that the Americans of Tucson 
have profited very much from their intercourse with the 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 199 

Mexicans, for nowhere in the southwest have I met a 
more civil and companionable people. 

The modern American is so full of the spirit of com- 
mercialism and the demon of material progress ; so mas- 
terful in all that makes for political expansion and the 
achievement of great enterprises, that he is in danger of 
forgetting his duties to God and the courtesies of social 
life. 

To-day I took my second stroll through the Mexican 
section of Tucson and noted the slow but steady en- 
croachment of Anglo-Celtic influence. I saw with regret 
that many of the old Spanish names of the streets had 
disappeared and that other and less euphonious ones had 
replaced them. The Calle Santa Rita has gone down in 
the struggle to hold its own with the ''gringo'' and 
Cherry street has usurped its traditional privileges, and 
our good-natured friend McKenna has his Celtic name 
blazoned where Santa Maria del Guadeloupe, by imme- 
morial right, ought to be. 

But, with the exception of these street names, the adop- 
tion of a more modern dress, and the absence of old time 
customs, fiestas and ceremonies, or their modification, 
the people are the same with whom I mingled two years 
ago in Zacatecas, Cuernavaca, and other towns in Mexico. 
Here are the narrow streets, with rows of one storied 
flat-roofed houses of sun baked brick, or adobes, with 
here and there a house whose floor is ''rammed" earth. 
Remember that lumber here a few years ago cost $80 the 
thousand. In early times there were houses with not a 
solitary nail anjrwhere in or about them, for the window 
frames and doors were held in place by strips of rawhide. 
The women no longer wear the many-striped "Rebozo" 
or the ' ' Tapole ' ' which concealed all the face but the left 



200 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

eye. Tlie Moors, who held possession of nearly one-half 
of Spain for almost 800 years, grafted on the Iberian 
race many of their own customs, manners and Oriental 
dress. The Spanish women inherited from them the 
''Rebozo," the ''Tapole" and concealment of the face, 
and the Mexican senoritas adopted the dress of their 
Spanish sisters. I found the men leaning, as of old, 
against the door jambs and walls of the mescal shops, 
smoking their soothing cigarettes, made by rolling a 
pinch of tobacco in a piece of corn-husk, and apparently 
supremely happy. But I missed the picturesque 
''zarape" and the many colored blanket of cotton or 
wool, and the sweeping sombrero, wide as a phaeton 
wheel, and banded with snakes of silver bullion. Through 
the ancient street of the old pueblo — the main street of 
the town — there passed and repassed a motley aggrega- 
tion of quaint people, Papago Indians, "greasers," half- 
castes, Mexicans and American ranchers, herders and 
cow-punchers. You must be careful here, for it is yet 
early in the forenoon, and the street is filled with horses^ 
mules and burros loaded with wood or garden truck for 
the market and dealers, and with tawny-complexioned 
men and women carrying huge loads on their heads and 
followed by bare-footed children and half-starved and 
wild looking mongrels, first cousins to the sneaking coy- 
otes of the Sierras. 

The sure sign of racial absorption comes when a peo- 
ple begin to adopt the diet and cooking of the foreign ele- 
ment with whom they must live and with whom they must 
associate, at least commercially. To test how far this 
process of assimilation and incorporation had already 
advanced among the Mexicans, I dined to-day at one of 
their restaurants. Fortunately or alas ! it was the same 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 201 

familiar and palatable meal I had so often sampled in 
the inland towns of the neighboring republic. Beginning 
with '^soppaseca" or vegetable soup, I had my choice 
of one or all of the dishes of "enchiladas," "tamales," 
'Hortillas;" plates of "frijoles" and ''chile con came" 
seasoned with ''chile Colorado" or any other kind of 
pepper. The dessert introduced "dulces," coffee or 
chocolate, cheese, cigarettes and Chihuahua biscuits. Evi- 
dently after lifty years of occupation the absorption of 
the Mexican by the Anglo-Celt is yet in its intial stage 
in Tucson. 

The "enchilada "and the "tamale" are of Aztec origin. 
The enchilada is a cake of corn batter dipped in a stew 
of tomatoes, cheese and onions seasoned with pepper 
and served steaming hot. The tamale is made from 
chopped meat, beef, pork or chicken, or a mixture of all 
three, combined with cornmeal, boiled or baked in husks- 
of corn. These dishes, when properly prepared, are de- 
licious and are gradually finding their way to American 
tables and restaurants. Cooked as the Mexicans cook 
them, they would be a valuable addition to the admirable 
menus of our eastern hotels. 

After dinner I visited the half acre of ground which 
was at one time the "God's acre," the last resting place 
of the early "comers," many of whom died with their 
boots on. In those days — 1855 to 1876 — the Apaches 
swooped down from their mountain lairs, and attacking 
the suburbs of the town and the neighboring ranchos, 
killed the men and boys, drove off the cattle and carried 
back with them the women and children. As I may have 
to deal some other time wth this extraordinary and 
crafty tribe and fierce race of men, I will say here, only 
in anticipation, that the Apaches of Arizona were the 



202 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

shrewdest and most revengeful fighters ever encoun- 
tered by white men within the present limits of the 
United States. Fiercer than the mountain lion, wilder 
than the coyote he called his brother, inured to great 
fatigue, to extreme suffering of soul and body, to the 
extremes of heat and cold and to bearing for days and 
nights the pangs of hunger and thirst, the Apache Indian 
was the most terrible foe the wilderness produced. In 
those early days this neglected piece of ground, ''where 
heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap," recorded 
the history of the pioneer days of the American Tucson. 
The headboards marking the graves informed the visiting 
stranger that this man was ' ' killed by the Apaches, ' ' this 
one "died of wounds in a fight with the Apaches," this 
other "scalped, tortured and killed by the Apaches," 
and — this family in the little corner of the graveyard — 
"this whole family, wife, husband and six children was 
wiped out by the Apaches." But these days are gone 
forever ; the Apache is imprisoned on the reservation and 
we may safely say of him what Bourienne said over the 
grave of Bonaparte, "No sound can awake him to glory 
again. ' ' 

To-day, with a population of 17,000, and a property 
valuation of many millions, this city is the social and 
commercial oasis of Arizona. The city is well supplied 
with churches, schoolhouses and public institutions. The 
Carnegie free library, erected at a cost of $25,000, is 
surrounded by well kept grounds; it faces Washington 
park, the military plaza of the old Mexican presidio, and 
the largest public park in the city. .The Sisters of St. 
Joseph look after the parochial schools, have a very fine 
academy for young ladies and conduct one of the best 
hospitals of Arizona. There are twelve hotels in the 




-Copyright hj Underwood & Underwood, New York. 

"WHITE EAGLE" AND "THE PUMA" APACHES ON PARADE. 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 203 

city and, one of them, the Santa Eita, is architecturally 
one of tlie most novel buildings of the southwest. It is 
named from the Santa Rita range of mountains and 
forms, with San Augustin's Cathedral, the most impos- 
ing structure in Tucson. The city council is experiment- 
ing in street oiling, not sprinkling the streets with oil, as 
in San Diego, southern California, but soaking them, so 
that the fine triturated sand forms with the oil a fairly 
durable and smooth surface. 

On these same streets one is always running up 
against some interesting and peculiar varieties of the 
Noachic stock. Here are Chinese in quest of the elusive 
dollar, stage ghosts in Oriental dress, quiet, unobtrusive, 
always looking down on the dust as if examining the 
minute particles entering into the composition of their 
material selves, and apparently doing a ' ' heap ' ' of think- 
ing; here, also, is Ms cousin " germain — the gentle and 
innocent-looking Papago or Pima of the mysterious abo- 
riginal race, sun-scorched and wind-tanned with long 
coal-black hair and keen snake-like eye. He is in from 
the reservation of San Xavier del Bac, nine miles south 
of here, asking a dollar for a manufactured stone relic 
worth 10 cents. The sons of Cush, the Ethiopian, mo- 
nopolize the lucrative trade of shoe blacking, guffaws 
and loud laughter. Varieties of the Caucasian race — 
rare varieties many of them — half-breeds, mulattos and 
Mexican half-castes, all have right of way and use it on 
the beautiful streets of Tucson. 



CHAPTEE XXIV. 



CAMP OF THE CONSUMPTIVES. 



From the balcony of my hotel I looked away, the morn- 
ing after I came to Tucson, to the northeast, where just 
outside the city limits, row upon row of white tents break 
the monotony of gray sand, mesquite and "grease" 
bush. Here on the desert, protected from the winds on 
every side by barriers of porphyritic mountains, is 
pitched the tented city of the consumptives or ' ' lungers ' ' 
as the rougher element around here call them. 

Here in this canvas-tented camp the victims of the 
^' white plague" and those threatened by the monster 
gather from all the states of the East and form a com- 
munity by themselves. The white canvas of the tents 
gruesomely harmonizes with the pale faces of the un- 
happy victims of the scourge. Farther away to the east 
I see white specks here and there on the foothills of the 
Catalinas. I ask a gentleman by my side what these dots 
are and he courteously answers: "These are the tents 
of the isolaters who wish to live alone and live their own 
lives in their own way." 

To-day I visited the camp or reservation of the con- 
sumptives. I seldom carry a letter of introduction, for 
I am one of those who depend much upon an accidental 
acquaintance. As I go wandering through the world I 
see many a face whose mild eyes and sweet, placid feat- 
ures bespeak a gentle mind and a candid soul. Such a 
face as this is worth more than a dozen of letters of in- 
troduction, for written on it is the assurance of ci\dlity 
and kindness. In any case I knew no one here to whom 



206 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

I could appeal for an introduction to any one in the camp. 
The tents are of cotton or ship canvas, with broad floors 
of ''rammed" earth, or simply rugs laid upon the dry 
sand. They are of varying sizes, furnished and orna- 
mented according to the means or tastes of the occu- 
pants. Most of them are divided into kitchen, living and 
sleeping apartments. In some, the gloom of the "liv- 
ing" room was relieved by the bright colors of a few 
Navajo blankets or Mohave rugs. In others were photo- 
graphs of the dear ones at home, little framed titbits of 
western scenery, illustrated souvenir cards from Euro- 
pean and eastern friends and caged California road- 
runners or Arizona mocking birds. Here also were 
earthenware jars called "ollas" holding water which 
cools by evaporation, banjos, zithers and guitars, lying 
on the table or suspended from the sides of the tents. Now 
and then you entered an apartment where an accumula- 
tion of Papago bows and arrows, obsidian tjpped lances, 
Apache quivers and Moqui stone hatchets advertise the 
archaeological taste of the proprietor. Occasionally I 
entered a tent where the limited means of the owner or 
renter allowed him or her few luxuries. To be poor is 
not a disgrace nor ought it to be a humiliation, but there 
are times and places when to be poor — I do not say pov- 
erty — is very trying to the human soul and galling to the 
independent mind. Without money and a liberal supply 
of it no consumptive should come here. In the tent of 
the young man or woman of limited resources was a 
single cot, or perhaps two, an ordinary chair and a 
'•^rocker," a trunk, a small pine wash stand, an oil stove, 
a looking-glass and maybe a few books and magazines. 
Now and then the purest and gentlest of breezes merrily 
tossed the flaps and flies of the tent, and a harmless and 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 207 

wondrously colored little lizard, called by the Mexicans 
"chiquita," coquetted with the magazines on the table. 
The patients who are here taking the ''air" treatment 
rarely enter the city. Every morning, from 6 to 12, 
butchers, milkmen, grocery boys and Chinese vegetable 
hawkers make the rounds of the camp and isolated tents. 
They are all here, the rich, the middling rich and the 
comparatively poor putting up a brave fight against an 
insidious, treacherous foe — "not so well to-day, but to- 
morrow, to-morrow, we'll be better" — always nursing 
the consumptive's longing and cherishing the ''hope that 
spring's eternal in the human breast." "What's the per- 
centage of the cured?" I do not know, I may only say 
that if pure, dry air can accomplish anything for dis- 
eased lungs, you have it here day and night abundantly. 
Neither Spain, Italy or Southern France may compare 
with Southern Arizona in dryness and balminess of cli- 
mate, and I write with the knowledge of one who is fa- 
miliar with the climates of these countries. I know not 
any place on earth better for pulmonary and nervous 
diseases than the desert lands around Tucson from No- 
vember to April. Bear in mind I am not recommending 
any man or woman to come here in the final stages of 
disease nor any one whose purse is not large, deep and 
well filled, for druggists' and doctors' bills, groceries 
and incidentals are "away up" and almost out of sight. 
The winter nights here are cool and bracing, and the 
early mornings sharp when a gasoline or oil stove is a 
most convenient piece of furniture. But from 8 in the 
morning to 4 in the afternoon every day in winter is a 
delight and the air an atmospheric dream. The sum- 
mers are hot, "confoundedly 'ot," to use a Wellerism, 
when the heat will at times run the mercury up to 120 



208 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

Fahrenheit. There have been weeks here in the summer 
when the thermometer would register 98 degrees day and 
night. But remember there would be only 20 per cent 
moisture in the air. In the eastern states such heat 
would wear down men and animals. A canvas tent of 
fair size costs anywhere from $60 to $100 or a tent may 
be rented including site for from $15 to $30 a month, 
counting in a little cheap furniture. People soon learn 
to do their own cooking, and after a time begin to live 
with reasonable economy. There is an electric road run- 
ning from the camp to the city, the fare for the return 
trip being 10 cents. In this tented village are men and 
women of all ages, but chiefly the young and the middle 
aged who, in the words of the Psalmist, are "suffering 
hard things and drinking the wine of sorrow." It is 
very lonely here for many and wearisome, and this feel- 
ing of loneliness engenders a sadness which is often 
more fatal than disease, for the splendid air cannot reach 
it. Away from home and friends, the human heart 
craves companionship and those who at home are natu- 
rally reserved, and socially exclusive, here become com- 
panionable and invite conversation. For some, life here 
is very trying indeed; it is so lonesome, so monotonous 
to live, day by day, this life of sameness and unchanging 
routine unredeemed by variety and imblessed by pleas- 
ant association. This isolation bears in upon the soul; 
it tires of its own thoughts which, even if pleasant, carry 
a note of sadness. There are here and there in the camp 
human souls, imprisoned in their decomposing bodies, 
that are by nature melancholy and given to brooding. 
They become morose in their thoughts and drift into 
thpl pitiiul condition described by the Royal Prophet 
when the sorrowful soul communes with itself and in 



BY PATH AND TRAIL, 209 

despair exclaims, ''I looked for one that would grieve 
■with me and there was none; and for one that would 
c( mf ort me and I found no one. ' ' 

The days are so long, so full of melancholy forebod- 
ings, of pleasant and unpleasant memories, of fears of 
dissolution and the hope of life; and after the day the 
wearisome night and intermittent slumbers, and even 
these broken with hacking coughs, with the dreaded 
chills and burning fever, and, perhaps, unwelcome 
dreams. 

Here each human will is . putting up a brave fight 
against treacherous and insidious foes, fiendishly cun- 
ning in their methods of attack. It is the combat of the 
body against millions of bacterial activities, of micro- 
scopic parasites, which, living, feed upon the lungs, and 
when dead poison the blood. In this unequal fight for 
life the soul is ever active, helping the body — its yet liv- 
ing tabernacle and beloved companion — with hope, with 
splendid determination, and whispering to it with un- 
quenchable love, ''What magnificent help this friendly 
air of Arizona is giving us." Then the body has an- 
other friend, severe, if you will, but a friend — the ter- 
rible cough, that racks the body with heroic determina- 
tion to tear out the dead and decaying bacteria poisoning 
the human temple. And now, 

"Swing outward, ye gates of the future; 

Swing inward, ye gates of the past. 
For the dark shades of night are retiring, 
And the white lights are breaking at last. ' ' 

The therapeutic air and loving soul are winning out. 
The cough is bidding good-bye to the body, its help is 
no longer required, the dreaded night sweats have van- 



210 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

islied and the soul, rejoicing, says to its companion, 
''The battle is won; the field is ours." 

In one tent, into which I was invited by the mother, 
reclined on the lounge her daughter, a fair young girl 
of 18 or 20, She sat up as we entered, and when I was 
introduced she courteously extended to me her hand, 
which left upon my own a sensation of wetness. Her 
conversation, address and bearing indicated a convent 
training and a cultivated mind. Her blue eyes, the fever 
flush on her cheeks, and her wealth of rich, auburn hair, 
sadly reminded me of the "Norman Peasant's Daugh- 
ter, ' ' immortalized by the Irish poet, Thomas Davis : 

*'To Munster's vale they brought her 

To the cool and balmy air, 
A Norman peasant's daughter 

With blue eyes and golden hair. 
They brought her to the valley, 

And she faded, slowly, there. 
Consumption has no pity 

For blue eyes and golden hair." 

The tent erected to shield ''from sunbeam and from 
rain the one beloved head," bore in its furnishment and 
decorations testimony that the hand which hung the etch- 
ings and photographs and the taste which arranged the 
rugs and furniture, were directed by a refined and culti- 
vated mind. The young lady has been here but five 
weeks, and already is beginning to experience a change 
for the better. May she and her companion in suffering 
return home restored to health and to the possession of 
many years of happiness. 

It is well to remember that Arizona is a very large ter- 
ritory — 114,000 square miles — and that all of it is not to 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 211 

be recommended for diseased lungs or shattered nerves. 
There are broad stretches of desert where the winds 
raise clouds of finest dust ; there are towering mountains 
and startling canj^ons and gloomy ravines. There are 
sections of the land which exude baleful malaria, and 
places black, for miles and miles, with solid waves of 
lava, recording the elemental confusion of fire and steam 
and exploding gases in days gone by. But, I am told by 
those who have explored the territory — by pioneers of 
the early times — that the sand and gravel beds of the 
Tucson valley are ideal grounds for consumptives and 
neurasthenics, or people of shattered nerves. From 
what I know of other lands and other climates, I believe 
the pioneers are right. 



■ CHAPTEE XXV. 

THE OSTRICH FARM AND THE SALTON SEA. 

The American people live in the most wonderful of all 
lands, and do not seem to realize the glory of their pos- 
session. They cross oceans and girdle foreign countries 
in quest of strange scenes; they fill the art galleries of 
Europe to view the productions of the sculptor and the 
painter, when here, within their own domain, unseen and 
unappreciated, are marvels of nature baffling all descrip- 
tive art, wonderful creations of God challenging the pen 
of the poet, and the possibilities of the brush of genius. 

While traveling through this wonderful territory I 
was asked if I had seen the ostrich farms on the Salt 
Kiver valley. I had to answer that I had not, and in 
every instance I was urgently pressed to visit the feed- 
ing grounds of this strange bird before leaving Arizona. 
I came to Phoenix last week to enjoy a few days of indo- 
lent ease before starting for the wilds of Sonora, Mexico, 
and the hunting grounds of the terrible Yaquis, of whom 
you have heard. Not far from Phoenix there is an os- 
trich farm, where 1,000 birds are annually surrendering 
to the ''pluckers" $30,000 worth of feathers and eggs. 1 
am not going to inflict upon my readers any detailed 
description of the wired farm enclosing these 1,000 Af- 
rican birds, nor of the pens of the birds, nor the topo- 
grapliical features of the land, but will simply record 
what I have seen and learned of the ostrich at the colony 
I visited. 

But first let me correct some mistakes and errors our 
story books and school books have handed down to us 



214 BY PATH AND TRAIL, 

about the ostrich and his habits. This singular bird^ 
when pursued by man or animal, does not bury his head 
in the sand and suppose that, because the ostrich cannot 
see its enemy, the enemy cannot see it. The ostrich, 
when in condition, can out-run and out-dodge almost any- 
thing traveling on two or four feet. This was^ well 
known to the ancients, for the Patriach Job instances the 
fleetness of the ostrich in proof of God's kindness: 
"For, if God hath deprived the ostrich of wisdom, nor 
gave her understanding, when the time calls for it, she 
setteth up her wings on high. She scorneth the horse 
and his rider." When driven to close quarters and 
forced to defend himself, this extraordinary bird is a 
fierce fighter, and very few wild animals care to attack 
him. 

She does not lay two eggs on the hot desert, hide them 
with a thin covering of sand and trust to luck or the 
sun to hatch them. She does not and cannot live for 
eight or ten months under pressure of great heat and 
feel no thirst. When compelled by circumstances, the os- 
trich can live a long time without water, perhaps a month 
or six weeks, but it cannot live, as one of our encyclope- 
dias tells us, a year without water. We always believed 
our story books and books of travel when they told us 
that the male ostrich, like our barn-yard rooster, always 
strutted around, escorted by eight or ten wives. The 
ostrich has but one mate, and, if the female dies after 
they have lived together for some time, the male bird is 
inconsolable and will sometimes pine away and die. 
The average life of the ostrich is 75 years, but after 
twenty-five years they bear no feathers of commercial 
value. 

The writer of the article in the encyclopedia, which I 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 215 

mentioned above, says the ostrich lays only two eggs a 
year, and that the female plucks out the feathers of the 
male twice a year. The African ostrich may do all these 
things, but his descendants now in California and Ari- 
zona have abandoned the habits of their primitive ances- 
tors and have conformed to modern conditions. The os- 
trich lays from twelve to sixteen eggs in a shallow hole, 
which the male bird has scooped out in a place conve- 
nient for hatching. They are large eggs, and, for forty- 
two days, the birds cover them alternately, the male by 
night and the female by day. By a mysterious la^ of 
adaptation, the color of the female, when brooding, is 
that of the desert sand, while that of her mate, which 
sets upon the eggs at night, is pitch black. This marvel- 
ous provision of nature helps to conceal the birds dur- 
ing the period of incubation from the eyes of prowling 
enemies. The chicks, when hatched, after a few days, 
are taken from the parents and confined in pens, where 
they are fed, and, until they can forage for themselves, 
raised by hand. If this were not done, many of the 
young birds would perish, for the parent ostriches seem 
to be indifferent to the fate of the little ones after they 
are hatched. It is to this apparent callousness of the 
ostrich the Patriarch Job alludes when he says, ^'She is 
hardened against her young ones as though they were 
not hers ; ' ' and the Prophet Jeremias, when he compares 
the ingratitude of Jerusalem to the indifference of the 
ostrich to her youjig: ''The daughter of my people is 
cruel, like the ostrich in the desert. ' ' 

The young birds are delicate when they come from the 
shell and demand careful treatment until they are six or 
seven weeks old, when they become independent, take a 
firm hold on life and hustle for themselves. A two- 



216 BY PATH AND TEATL. 

months-old chick is always hungry, he is pecking and 
eating every moment he is awake, and will devour more 
food than a grown bird. They grow fast, gaining a foot 
a month in height for six or seven months. Some of the 
birds on the Salt river farms are eight and nine feet 
from the head to the ground, and weigh from 400 to 
500 pounds. Some one has said that facts are some- 
times stranger than fiction, and in the wonderful provis- 
ion made by nature for the perpetuation of the ostrich^ 
the saying becomes an aphorism. The first three eggs 
laid by this singular bird are sterile and will not hatch. 
By a wonderful law of instinct, or call it what we will^ 
the mother lays these eggs outside the nest. There is a 
deep and mysterious law of nature compelling the bird 
to follow this command of instinct. On the African des- 
erts, when the nesting time draws near, the birds retire 
into the most lonely and unfrequented parts of the soli- 
tary and desolate region, far away from the haunts of 
beast and man, and from water. Now when the little 
creature, the chicken, is liberated from its prison by the 
bursting of its walls, it is very thirsty and craves for 
water or anything to slake its thirst. But there is no 
water. The mother looks upon its gasping offspring 
with its tiny tongue protruding, carries it over to where 
a sterile egg is lying in the sand, breaks the shell, and at 
once the little perishing creature buries its head in the 
opened egg, sucks in the liquid refreshment and lives. 
The next day the little thing staggers by itself to the 
wonderful fountain of the desert, and the day after it is 
able to walk straight upright to the well. 

On the ostrich farms or alfalfa ranges of Arizona^ 
the young birds are taken away and raised by hand^ the 
barren eggs gathered by the keeper and sold for $1.00 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 217 

each. There is another very singular thing about the 
wonderful knowledge, or instinct, of the ostrich. If an 
egg is removed from her nest while she is hatching, and 
a sterile egg, heated to the same temperature as eggs on 
which she is setting and of the same color and size sub- 
stituted, she will at once detect the change and roll the 
egg out. If all the eggs in the nest be taken away and 
sterile eggs put in their places, the mother will abandon 
the nest and lay no more for months. If you ask me for 
an explanation of the origin of this marvelous and mys- 
terious sense, I can only answer in the words of the in- 
spired writer: ''This is the Lord's doing, and it is won- 
derful in our eyes. ' ' 

About fifteen eggs is the average ''setting," and the 
period of incubation forty-two days. The male bird takes 
upon himself the heavier labor of the contract. He takes 
charge of the nest and assumes control of the work at 
5 o'clock in the afternoon, and stays with his job 'til 
9 o'clock in the morning, when the female relieves him. 
At noon he returns and keeps house for an hour while 
his partner goes for her lunch. The male bird turns the 
eggs once every twenty-four hours. Incubators have 
been lately introduced and are giving satisfaction. The 
chicks, when two weeks old, sell for $25 each, and 
when four years of age a pair, male and female, sell for 
from $400 to $600. 

The birds do not differ in appearance until they are 
eighteen months old, at that age they take on an alto- 
gether different plumage; the male arrajdng himself in 
black and the female in drab. When six months old, the 
birds experience the sensation of their ilrst plucking, 
und after that they give up their plumes every eighl 
months. Not until the third plucking do the feathers 



218 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

bring much in the market ; the first and second pluckings 
selling for a few shillings. A healthy ostrich will yield 
$30 worth of feathers every year for twenty-five years, 
though the average life of the bird is seventy-five years. 
Many hundreds of young birds roam over alfalfa fields 
enclosed with wire netting. Breeding pairs are confined 
in a two-acre enclosure. The range birds feed, like cat- 
tle, on alfalfa grass, picking up quartz pebbles which are 
scattered over the fields for their use, and which, for 
them, serves the same end as gravel for hens and chick- 
ens. When the hens are laying they are given, from 
time to time, a diet of bone dust to help in strengthening 
the egg shells. One of the most singular and inter- 
esting habits of the ostrich is his daily exercise. 
Every morning at sunrise the herd, two by two, begin 
training for the day by indulging in a combination cake- 
walk and Virginia reel. Then in single file they race around 
the pasture till they are thoroughly limbered up. When 
halting, they form in squares and begin to dance, intro- 
ducing imitations of the waltz, negro break-downs, cake- 
walks and hornpipes. It is a laughable and grotesque 
performance, and, when the birds are in full plumage 
and their wings extended, not devoid of grace and beauty 
of action. The ostrich is the ornithological goat. He 
will eat and digest anything. Offer him a large San 
Diego orange, and he'll swallow it whole. Grease an old 
shoe with tamarind oil, throw it into the paddock where 
the birds feed, and at once there is a struggle for its 
possession, ending in the complete disappearance of the 
brogan in its entirety or in fragments. The salvation 
of the ostrich are its plumes. His feathers have saved 
him from the fate of extinct birds and animals like the 
great auk and the Siberian mammoth. He is destined to 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 219 

last to the end of time, or to the effacement of vanity 
from the heart of woman — a weakness of the sex which 
began with time and will only end when time shall be no 
more. He is the only bird or animal that can live and 
be healthy on grass, grain, fruits, vegetables, fish, flesh, 
or leather, 

A few weeks before coming to Phoenix I was told that 
the great Colorado river broke away from its own chan- 
nel, was filling the Salton Sink, and threatening to 
eventually destroy the homes and farms of 12,000 pros- 
perous settlers. When I reached Yuma, this morning, 
I learned for the first time that, if the river was not 
turned back, an inland sea would form, and the climate of 
southern Arizona and southeastern California change. 

North of the Mexican boundary is a splendid tract of 
land known as Imperial Valley, homesteaded by 10,000 
families. The chief towns— Imperial, Holtville, Heber 
and Brawley — are all now thriving and prosperous. 
South of the border is an area of land equal to that of 
Imperial valley in fertility and productiveness, belonging 
to the Colorado River Development Company. The 
principal canal of the great irrigating system leaves the 
Colorado river a few miles below Yuma at an elevation 
of 100 feet above the sea, and crossing the Mexican fron- 
tier, flows eastward into Imperial valley. The town 
of Imperial, almost in the center of the valley, is six- 
ty-two feet lower than the ocean, and the grade contin- 
ues to fall till at Salton Sink it is down to 287 feet be- 
low sea level. This decline gives a rapid current to the 
flowing waters, and the opening in the river bank has 
grown so wide that it will take much time and millions 
to close it. If the break be not repaired, the Imperial 
valley and the entire Colorado desert of southern Cali- 



220 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

fornia up to the ancient beaches on the inclosing moun- 
tains, will become submerged and a great lake formed at 
the end of twenty years. So, at least the engineers of the 
Southern Pacific and the hydrographers now here assure 
me. 

The new sea now forming in the desert lands of Ari- 
zona, Mexico and California is one of the most extra- 
ordinary assisted natural phenomena of modern times. 
It has changed the course of one of the greatest rivers 
of the West, has forced one of the greatest railroads in 
the world to move back, and back and back again, is con- 
verting a desert into an inland sea, may possibly change 
the climate of a great territory, and even involve two 
friendly nations in diplomatic controversy. 

Back of all is the sinister suspicion that behind the 
opening is a deep-laid plot to acquire by purchase from 
Mexico an important slice of Lower California. This 
suspicion has probably reached the ears of the President, 
who is above trickery and treachery, and may account 
for his "rush order" to Mr. Harriman of the Southern 
Pacific to "close the breach; count not the cost, but close 
the breach. ' ' It will be closed. 

This morning I sailed over the ruins and roofs of some 
of the buildings of Salton Sink, where a few years ago 
were the greatest salt works and evaporating pans in 
America. Where three years ago there was a desolate 
and forbidding wilderness, there is now a lake twenty- 
three miles wide, fifty miles long, in places forty feet 
deep and forced by the inrush of the waters of the Gila 
and Colorado rivers, is rising nearly one inch every 
twenty-four hours. The break is in the banks of an irri- 
gating canal a few miles south of Yuma, Ariz. Three 
miles above this town, the Colorado opens its side and 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 221 

takes in the Gila river, and from there the flow sweeps on 
lao miles to the Gulf of California. 

Possibly the most ambitious attempt at irrigation of 
arid lands ever undertaken by private enterprise was 
that of the California Development Company, which 
promised its shareholders to irrigate, by gravity, from 
the Colorado river, 800,000 acres of desert land, one- 
fourth of which belongs to Mexico. The company was 
capitalized at $1,250,000. This company began opera- 
tions in April, 1897, and in six years villages and towns 
sprang into life, and where a few years ago there was a 
desert, there are now fertile farms, orange and lime 
groves and comfortable homes, occupied by thousands 
of industrious and contented people. A canal, called the 
Alamo, was dredged from the Colorado through the sand 
lands, and from this canal, by auxiliary ditches, was fur- 
nished water for irrigating the farms. 

When the Colorado river was low, the canal was slug- 
gish in its flow, the channel and subsidiary trenches filled 
with silt, and the settlers became clamorous. Then the 
company opened a second intake, known as the Imperial, 
which connected the Colorado with the Alamo canal. 
Here, and now, is where the trouble begins. Neither suf- 
ficiently strong nor perfected headgates, wing-dams or 
bulkheads were constructed, and, when, in the spring of 
1903, the Colorado, swollen from mountain and tributary 
streams, came rushing to the sea, it swept the artificial 
works aside and entered upon its present career of de- 
vastation. 

About this time a series of sharp, quick and rotary 
earthquakes rocked the country and opened a gash in 
the Colorado above the Imperial weir. From this open- 
ing the waters poured into what is now known as the 



222 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

new river, and onwards, almost due north, to Salton 
basin, seventy-five miles away. 

Salton Basin was a vast depression in the earth's sur- 
face, sinking from sea level to 287 feet below. It wid- 
ened over two counties of southern California and 
stretched well into Mexico, forming a huge depression be- 
tween well defined ''beaches" of an ancient sea, and 
covered an approximate area of fifteen to forty miles 
wide and about 100 miles long. There is no doubt but 
that at some time in the past this sunken desert was an 
extension of the Gulf of California. 

From a point near the boundary line to the gulf, a dis- 
tance of about eighty-five miles, lies the delta of the Col- 
orado, a rich alluvial plain of great depth, equal in pro- 
ductivity to the delta of the Nile ; a vast area, apparently 
as level as a table, built up by the Colorado river, that has 
drawn its material from the plains of Wyoming, through 
Green river, and, adding to it all down through Colorado, 
Utah and Arizona, deposited it on the new land it was 
forming at the end of its flow. 

This is the first time in its history that the Colorado 
has changed its course, and all efforts of men and money 
of the great Southern Pacific and the giant irrigation 
companies have failed to coax or force it back to its 
natural bed. A river that has flowed on through the 
ages, laughing at all obstacles, tearing the hearts out of 
opposing mountains and ripping for itself in places a 
channel a mile deep, and, in places, leagues wide, is not 
going to be turned aside easily. Great is the strength of 
the Southern Pacific ; enormous is the power of corporate 
wealth; cunning is the brain and deft the hand of the 
American, but as yet the strength of the Southern Pa- 
cific, the power of corporate wealth, combined with the 



BY PATH AND TRAIL. 223 

shrewdness and clearness of the American brain, have 
not been able to subdue that turbid, treacherous, sullen 
river, the Eio Colorado. 

Three times, at a cost of a half million of dollars, the 
Southern Pacific has wrenched apart and moved back 
its trunk line, twenty, thirty, and now, through a cloud 
of profanity, seventy-five miles from its lawful bed. Al- 
ready Salton, with all its buildings, its vast evaporating 
pans and improvements, is submerged, and fertile farms 
and ranch lands are destroyed, it may be, for all time. 
The towns and improved lands of Imperial valley, the 
grazing lands of the Pioto region of Lower California, 
Mexico, and millions of dollars invested in railroad and 
other valuable securities are threatened, and to save 
them may call for the co-operation of two nations and 
the expenditure of an enormous sum of money. The 
whole territory, from the Chuckawalla mountains and 
far south o'f "the Mexican frontier, is menaced with anni- 
hilation. 

Unless the inrush of the Colorado is checked, it is very 
probable that the Salton sea and the Gulf of California 
will again form one great body of water. 

This means that the inland desert will become a great 
gulf where, a few years since, there was a field of sand 
120 miles from the sea. 

Thus, sometimes, do natural phenomena, in time, 
make for the prosperity or decadence of a nation. In 
spite of evaporation, the profanity of the Southern Pa- 
cific shareholders, and the herculean attacks of 2,000 
laborers, led by expert hydraulic engineers, the inland 
sea is wfdening, for the waters of the great river are 
rushing to its assistance at the rate of 8,000 cubic feet 
per second. This is the volume at the lowest stage of 



224 BY PATH AND TRAIL. 

the water ; the sprmg freshets will swell it to 50,000 feet, 
for that is the average high flow of the river. 

At present the new inland lake is a beautiful sheet of 
water, and is a never failing source of wonder to Eastern 
tourists after crossing hundreds of miles of arid wastes, 
of sand, greasewood and cactus. To the west, from the 
fond-du-lac or foot of the lake, tower the snow-capped 
peaks of Mount San Bernardino and Mount San lacinto, 
each about 12,000 feet high. For ages the Bernardino 
has held the restless, crawling sands of the thirsty des- 
ert which scorched its foothills, and at last the cool 
waters have come and rippling waves play with its foun- 
dations. Facing Salton — or what was once Salton — the 
sea is about twelve miles wide, and the mountains, rising 
majestically to the west, mirror themselves on its placid 
surface. 

Here, in Yuma, they tell me the temperature was no 
higher than usual last summer, yet the heat was the most 
oppressive in the history of the place. They attribute 
this oppression to the Salton sea, and dread the ap- 
proach of June with a much greater area under water. 

Whatever the outcome of this continuous inundation 
may be, if not arrested, whether the present waters join 
the gulf or an inland sea is formed, a remarkable climatic 
change is sure to occur, and, indeed, is now in process 
of evolution. For the past year, more rain has fallen in 
and around Yuma than in the last five years, and sections 
of land that were formerly a wilderness of shifting sands 
are now Blossoming like a garden. Here before our very 
eyes is the verification of the prophecy of Isaiah : ' ' The 
land that was desolate and impassable shall be glad, and 
the wilderness shall rejoice and shall flourish like a lily; 
it shall bud forth and blossom and shall rejoice with joy; 



BY PATH AND TRAIL, 225 

the glory of Libanus is given to it ; the beauty of Carmel 
and Sharon." 

The vitality of desert seeds is imperishable, and, like 
the peace of the Lord, surpasseth the understanding of 
man. There are places near here, now bright and green 
with flowers and grasses, that a few years since were 
wastes of land, and from immemorial time scorched with 
hopeless sterility. Since ''the waters have broken out 
in the desert and streams in the wilderness," the face 
of this region is taking on the look of youth, and the 
land a competitive value. 

At Salton the water is as translucent as the sea at 
Abalone, and is even more salty. It seems almost un- 
canny to cruise about in skiffs and launches over places 
which, a while ago, were barren lands, and over homes 
V here people lived. 

At the present time two great forces are battling for 
the mastery of a territory as large as the state of Rhode 
Island. On the one side is the Colorado river that has 
never been controlled by man; on the other is a power- 
ful irrigation company, supported by the genius and re- 
source of a great railroad corporation. There are indi- 
cations that they may retire from the fight and run for 
the hills, leaving the governments of the United States 
and Mexico to engage the monster that threatens the an- 
nhilation of Imperial valley and its thousands of culti- 
vated acres and prosperous homes. 

THE END. 



UBRARYOFCOMGRESS 



017 056 463 



